Q: What is VoIP?
A: VoIP, or "Voice over Internet Protocol" refers to sending voice and fax phone calls over data networks, particularly the Internet. This technology offers cost savings by making more efficient use of the existing network.

Q: What is IP Telephony?
A: IP Telephony is the technology of transmitting voice and fax over data networks using the Internet Protocol (IP). This technology offers new capabilities and enormous cost savings by taking advantage of the intelligence and more efficient use of the network. This creates the potential for new opportunities and services.

Q: What is an VoIP Gateway?
A: An VoIP Gateway allows Internet telephone calls to be sent onto the PSTN by taking voice by converting circuit-switched calls onto the packet-switched network and back again. This allows a person at a PC to call any telephone number served by the gateway. VoIP gateways take voice (or even a fax transmission) from the circuit-switched PSTN and place it on the packet-switched Internet and vice versa. The cost elements in PC-to-phone calls are the cost of connecting from the PC to the local ISP and the cost of connecting from the VoIP Gateway at the endpoint to the phone at the final destination. In most cases, the connections from the gateways to the calling party's are local phone calls. Since the charge for the long distance transmission is going out over the Internet the cost of the call is minimal.

Q: How does traditional phone service work?
A: The traditional telephone network often referred to as the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and uses circuit switched technology to transmit calls. A dedicated connection or circuit is created that connects two parties. When a phone is dialed there is a dedicated path created from the users phone system to the call recipient. The PSTN network provides real-time transmission with a guaranteed quality of service level ensured by a dedicated circuit shared on the telephone call. The circuit is not used efficiently because it is dedicated throughout the duration of the phone call but most conversations are largely made up of silence, so the circuit while in use is not actually transmitting anything.

Q: How does VoIP work?
A: VoIP is different from the PSTN because it does not use dedicated circuits; multiple users share networks. Information is transmitted over the network in packets and the network is often referred to as a packet-switched network. This is extremely efficient because the network is only used when it is transporting packets of information.
When using an IP network to transmit voice, issues such as the speed of the Internet connection, other traffic on the Internet, latency (the delay that takes place from the time someone speaks till the time the other person can hear them), and the delays or loss of the transmittal of packets that lowers the quality of the voice conversation need to be addressed
The billing mechanism for VoIP is based on the amount of bandwidth used or dedicated.

Q: What kind of quality can I expect from Internet or IP Telephony?
A: It depends on two primary factors, the amount of bandwidth available and the IP Endpoint connected (whether there are additional components that are providing processing power to improve the connection).
Most people's initial introduction to PC Telephony is through dial-up Internet accounts that offer "narrow" bandwidth. This users experience ranges of quality depending upon the amount of traffic on the net, and bandwidth limitations that can lead to packet loss, latency and jitter. This shows up as a clipped effect with gaps of speech or garbled sound.
Specially designed products with sophisticated electronic components that provide additional processing power to address these technological shortcomings can dramatically improve these problems.
All of the leading ITSP's are introducing Broadband solutions that offer bandwidth that supports high quality telephone calls. Coupled with the appropriate interface devices, these calls are indistinguishable from a traditional telephone call.

Q: Is VoIP right for my company?
A: Medium to large multinational corporations will see the most savings, as they typically have both the network in place and the voice volume to effectively use VoIP service. A company like this could save up to 50% off its long distance phone bill.

Q: Why does VoIP support new emerging technologies better than the PSTN?
A: An inherent limitation with the PSTN is that intelligence resides in telephone company Central Offices (CO) and corporate PBX's to. The technology in those systems is highly reliable but changes are slow and expensive to make.
In contrast, IP architecture uses networks of servers and routers that are rapidly escalating in power and frequent introductions of new software that offers new functionality and features. High-end routers can process more information at a fraction of the cost and physical size of a traditional CO switch.

Q: How are companies deploying VoIP technology?
A: VoIP technologies are available as complete turnkey solutions or as incremental add-ons that work with both the existing telephone and data equipment in place.
The benefits of VoIP are very attractive and many corporations are exploring this technology to examine how it can benefit them. Adoption is likely to be slow because corporations already have significant investments in highly reliable telephone equipments and all companies consider telecommunications to be mission critical.
Surprisingly, it is the under 100-user market that is leading the charge in installing turnkey VoIP systems. For companies shopping for phone systems, the enormous number of integrated capabilities is very attractive.

Q: Comparing with traditional PSTN calls, will I notice the difference when talking with VoIP service users?
A: When Internet condition is stable, you can hardly tell when you use VoIP service to make a call. Some ISPs provide better internet quality than others. For the most amazing voice quality/clarity, you can ask our vendor for suggestions on the best available quality ISP.

Q: It seems like VoIP works for individual and large companies, can small and medium size companies use VoIP?
A: There are a variety of VoIP products that are aimed at helping small and medium size companies that start at 2 ports and up and come in stackable modules.

Q: How easily can existing data networks accommodate voice traffic?
A: A Some modifications and changes are required because voice transmissions must take place real time and must have priority in routing or users will experience the same kind of problems described earlier that narrow band PC Telephony users face, delay, latency and jitter.
If however, voice and data traffic are not carefully designed and monitored, growing voice demand can rob data users of the network capacity that they need

Q: What is the quality of the connections?
A: The quality is good - it can be described as higher quality than GSM cellular network connections, but a bit lower than land line connections

Q: What is VOIP technology?
A: Voice Over Internet Protocol is a technology that voice conversations are digitized inside of IP. packets and transported over a data network. The main difference is that the PSTN(public switched telephone netwark) we have been using for years allows only one caller per channel and VOIP allows many callers per channel. The major international long distance carriers are making plans to move their traffic to VOIP networks . Again the reason is simple, lower costs for the carriers and the consumer. The call quality is the same and that is why VOIP technology is rapidly gaining market share as it is the future of the industry.

Q: What is the Voice quality?
A: Many people associate VOIP with PC-to-PC services such as Netmeeting and net2phone. These types of computer based VOIP services typically have voice quality problems due to Internet congestion, as well as sound card and microphone incompatibilities. Our network offers voice quality comparable to regular land-line services.

Q: Just to be clear… do I need a computer to use the VoIP?
A: No. you need only our VoIP gateway .

Q: How can I control my VoIP network with the call manager ?
A: You need a program that connects to the call agent status port (TCP port 2727). Currently it will receive information which endpoint is engaged in a call and which is not.
We will provide such a call manager in our total solution.

Q: What do network conditions effect voice quality?
A: VoIP quality is subject to the following network condition during the transmissions:

Bandwidth - Each VoIP call has its average and minimum requirements on bandwidth usage. If IP network bandwidth cannot support the minimum requirement on bandwidth, the voice quality will not be good, or the voice will be dropped. The IP network must meet these minimum bandwidth required to establish and maintain the call.

Delay - Delay of VoIP transmission will cause interaction difficulty between the caller and called parties.

Packet Loss - IP networks breaks large blocks of data into smaller chunks called "packets". These individual packets, to a certain extent, will be lost due to transmission delay and/or poor transmission quality. Voice will be distorted at the destination because of sever packet loss.

Jitter - If an IP network produces various latency for different packets, it introduces jitter, which is the different latency between two continuous packets. Sever jitter will cause distortion of voice?