What is VOIP?

VOIP stand for Voice over Internet Protocol. This means a telecommunications system that uses the Internet or other Internet Protocol network to transmit telephone calls long distance or short as well.  VOPI is totally based on IP (internet protocol) address that was actually designed for data networking and along with the great success ration it has achieved now it comes with voice networking so it’s not a new idea at all. Actually it has been established by a US defense department as an experiment since 1973.

The extreme reason why the flow of people is diverting to VOIP is its competitive costs over traditionally phone usage in long distances. It almost cut down your phone bills to fifty percentages as it offers cheaper long distance call rates that are almost one tenth of recently available traditional call rates. This is probably a best option to cut down your hotel phone bills or landline or cell phone bills in roaming charges. VOIP offers all this facilities that comes in landline phones such as high speed connections, voice clarity, low rates, flexibility etc.

Most of the internet connections offers only fixed monthly rental but don’t provide call facility where as VOIP has both the functionality of internet connections and call facility and don’t charge per minute for long distance calls.

Your voice is converted into packet data in all VOIP systems, and then transmitted to the recipient through the internet. With a view to make this procedure quicker these packets are compressed before transmitting like a zip file.

It is a cup of tea to get started with VOIP the only thing you need to do is:

  • Start some free phone or messaging software
  • Plug in a microphone
  • Have Headphones or speakers

Before making a call you have to check whether your friend or relatives is using VOIP or any other? If he is using any other then you may need to install more than one program!

The main problem with VOIP technology is bandwidth connections although it is not as difficult as it sound but nothing is ever as simple as it sound. Dial-up is not at all suitable for VOIP. This requires at least 100kb bandwidth else you won’t be able to get satisfactory result. It is very essential to get router along with VOIP.