Internet Protocol Telephony Discussion Response
Hello,
This is a two part questions. First I will need the discussion question answer which will be below in bold, 250 words APA format. For those response I will need two responses of at least 175 words each.
A) Conduct a web search for the key words “IP telephony” or “telephony”. Then complete the following:
- Get the references of 3 sites that come up with the best, most informative results.
- Based on your scanning of these 3 sites,
- Summarize a one paragraph description (of at least 250 words) of what IP Telephony means
- Provide which source you used exactly where in your paragraph, by providing the article author’s last name, year of the publication of the article or the last modified date of the website, and the page or paragraph number where your citation can be found. Use the following format (authorLastName, year, p.# or para.#).
- List 3 examples of services that use IP Telephony, with a short description of each service
Student one:
Internet Protocol telephony (IP telephony) describes the varying technologies utilized to transfer [analog] voice or fax communications over packet-switching [digital] networks (Rouse, 2010). Many people tend to use the terms IP telephony and VoIP (Voice over IP) interchangeably but there can be subtle differences between the two. VoIP serves as an extension, or rather a more inclusive description involving formalized protocols and even the use of existing computer hardware and software. IP telephony can include many uses of technology such as the installation of an IP-PBX (Private Branch Exchange) to convert the existing analog voice communications to digital signals which can be sent across the Internet (Unuth, 2019). My organization was gearing up to go this route by hooking our existing PBX into a specialized router that was able to perform this conversion. We opted to take another option, instead, so I set up a managed SIP service operating over the Internet and we have been able to completely remove all PBX equipment, including the copper lines ran to each desk.
VoIP can simply refer to the digital transmission of these communications, but IP telephony describes the overall process of utilizing digital networks to transmit analog voice (or fax) signals. Using the Internet to make free phone calls has been a concept for many years, but it requires specific software downloads and, due to being highly unregulated, this concept led to the development of VoIP technologies (Unuth, 2019).
IP telephony and VoIP solutions often require a softphone (an installed application that handles all phone services through the click of a mouse) or a dedicated IP phone to operate. IP phones provide the look-and-feel of a traditional POTS (plain old telephone system) phone, but they are designed to convert voice signals to digital and transmit them over the existing [digital] network (Han, 2017). Existing phone hardware can be used by installing ATAs (analog telephone adapters) which convert the analog signals to digital. In our installation, the LAN connects into the IP phone, and the computer’s network connection is also connected to the phone; this “daisy-chain” installation eliminates the need for multiple data drops at each desk.
Han, T. (2017, September 04). Beginner’s guide to understanding IP phones. Telzio. Retrieved from https://telzio.com/blog/beginners-guide-to-underst…
Rouse, M. (2010, November). IT telephony (Internet Protocol telephony) [definition]. TechTarget. Retrieved from https://searchunifiedcommunications.techtarget.com…
Unuth, N. (2019, September 24). What’s the difference between VoIP and IP telephony? Lifewire. Retrieved from https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-the-difference-be…
Student two:
IP Telephony is a term that describes the way in which specific technologies may utilize various protocols to conduct the transmission of voice, fax, and other information that would previously have utilized the Publicly Switched Telephone Network, or PSTN. (3CX, 2020) More technically speaking, IP telephony systems are able to simultaneously transport voice traffic and power utilizing the existing twisted pair infrastructure leverage by more traditional or legacy phone systems. (Mehtab Khan, 2008) These systems will utilize a twisted pair broadband switch, which connects on one end to an IP telephone voice switch via ethernet, and to a media converter on the other end via existing twisted pair. The media converter is tasked with conditioning the traffic between the ethernet and twisted pair sides of the connection. (Mehtab Khan, 2008) The reason this is significant is that, historically, voice and data transmission was conducted on their own separate physical networks. With separate networks, come separate costs. The convergence of these two networks has given rise to the use of data networks to transport voice. With data transmission volumes typically far outweighing that of voice transmission, it made sense that the evolution of phone systems would move this way. Now, with the various software/applications available to those who wish to use them, phone calls can be made via the internet, free of charge, and completely bypass the telephone companies charges for these services all together.
Frequently, we hear the terms IP Telephone and VoIP used interchangeably, which is not necessarily accurate. IP Telephony, as explained, is a technical concept that describes a method to making a phone system digital, so as to take advantage of the internet, and thus all the hardware and applications that may be linked to it. (Unuth, 2019) VoIP, on the other hand, is the digital transport vehicle for said phone calls. In sticking with that example, in a very basic sense.. in a hierarchy, think of IP Telephony as the highway, and VoIP as the cars that drive on the highway.
