What is VoIP
Posted by Raul from New York, NY, US on February 17, 2008
Explain in detail the meaning of VoIP and how does it relates to your product?
Generically, VoIP is simply a term used to capture the mechanisms for the transport of voice applications over packet networks. These mechanisms include the transport of voice payload, as well as the transport of voice signaling applications. The most important aspect of VoIP from the view of an interior network element is that it requires an application hierarchy. Voice applications have certain performance constraints that must be met in order to maintain voice quality, for example. Voice transport, signaling transport, and generic Internet transport are all potential traffic classes that must be forwarded by network elements, each with a different set of performance characteristics.
So to our product, VoIP is one of the main drivers for an extensive quality of service architecture whereby different applications can be prioritized and controlled in order to meet the varying performance targets. Certain traffic can be mapped to very low latency and jitter transport, paths, while others are mapped to more elastic transport paths. Traffic from one customer has to be mapped into one of many traffic classes, in real time, while maintaining and monitoring the performance of each traffic class.
Although VoIP isn't the only application that drives an extensive QoS architecture, it is perhaps the most prevalent today.
