VoIP -

TELECOMMUNICATION
OF THE FUTURE

e
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VoIP - TELECOMMUNICATION OF THE FUTURE By V. K. Murugan

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VoIP - TELECOMMUNICATION
OF THE FUTURE
By V. K. Murugan
Traditionally we are used to making phone calls over switched circuit networks. What this means is
that dedicated "circuits" are required for calls and resource utilization is low, investment in
infrastructure is high. This explains why we pay significantly for telephony - and specifically for long
distance calls. As the world gets more and more hungry for information and there is increase in
interaction between countries, the cost of communication over long distance becomes significantly
high and disturbing. At the same time, the explosive growth of the Internet and its dramatically low
cost for interaction across the Globe irrespective of distance has begun to show the power of packet
networks, making the case for Voice over such packet networks.

It then makes sense to be able to use infrastructure that can support all media - data, voice and video.
Wouldn't it be cool to use the same medium that uses e-mail, to send voice? If e-mail is so inexpensive
why not have equally cheap telephony? The Internet works on well tested networks and protocols -
TCP/IP being the most significant. VoIP - Voice over IP - intends to leverage the existing Internet for
purposes of voice as well. It may not be as simple as it sounds - but the concept is now well supported
by standards and infrastructure, which is beginning to make this a reality.

VoIP is beginning to make its presence felt, with several service providers beginning to deploy this
technology enabling their customers to enjoy telephony at significantly low costs (ever tried Dial
Pad?). Large corporations are using IP telephony to communicate between their offices spread across
geographic locations , thereby significantly cutting down communication costs.

Let us take a simplistic, high-level view of what VoIP exactly means. In a VoIP network, a telephone, a
trunk circuit or a computer may be connected to a 'gateway', which converts the digital stream/analog
voice to packets. These packets then travel over the Internet (or the Intranet, as the case may be) to the
destination gateway - where the packets are decoded and converted back to digital stream/analog
voice. This simply, is VoIP! Hmmmwonder why so many companies are fighting to do something so
simple! There are a few questions here -how is a call setup? Who controls the calls? Where do the dial
tones come from? To know how the system operates, it is essential to become familiar with a few key
components of the VoIP architecture.

First, there are the brawny, versatile yet dumb blocks called 'Media Gateways (MG)'. Gateways convert
between streams/analog voice to packets, they do necessary encoding/decoding, they apply different
tones on a connected telephone (or relevant tones/signals on digital trunks or computers), they open

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2003 Amtex Systems. All rights reserved.

 e
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VoIP - TELECOMMUNICATION
OF THE FUTURE
By V. K. Murugan
voice ports and then finally transfer data to the IP cloud. They are the 'window' to the IP network. A
Computer, telephone or a trunk line is connected to a Gateway to enable this service (telephones are
no longer the only devices to make calls-even your computer can function as a full fledged phone and
EPABX all rolled into one).

But gateways are usually dumb (there is an exception if a gateway employs a particular protocol called
SIP), they do nothing unless someone tells them to. It is the 'gateway controller' that actually controls
the gateway and handles signaling. A controller (known as Media gateway Controller -MGC, or Call
agent or Gatekeeper) is a piece of software that is capable of controlling several gateways. It is the
controller which handles call setup, determines the target for a dialed digit/IP address (routing), keeps
billing records, (though there are gateways who could do billing as well).

The MGC is the brain. Telephony is not limited to a simple phone call-what about conferencing? Call
hold? Call forward? Voice mail? Interactive voice response? There are several applications that need to
be supported, and the MGC manages this. In effect, the MGC is expected to completely replace the
existing Switch. For this reason it's also called a soft switch!.

There are currently four leading protocols that help in setting up these sessions and manage them
(one could look at it as the MGC and MG using these protocols to provide the telephony services) they
are H.323, SIP, MGCP and MEGACO. H.323 is ITU-T backed; it's a gorilla in size and complexity. SIP, MGCP,
MEGACO are IETF backed -and are simpler and more suited to the Internet way of doing things (or so
claimed by IETF!).

Opportunities

The VoIP area is vast and opportunities exist at several levels. Three core areas can be identified.
Call Agent - development of a Call Agent that is redundant, extensible to handle several protocols,
and provides for easy integration of other protocols. (A Call Agent may control several protocol
end Gateways, e.g. H.323, MEGACO and a single Call Agent may support MGCP Gateways). The Call
Agent needs to provide call control and routing, support different protocols, preferably be
redundant, collect call statistics. In general it should support facilities a traditional switch may
provide in the telephony network.

Email:
Please e-mail itservices@amtexsystems.com
in order to get more information.
AMTEXSYSTEMS
E-SERVICES TEAM BUILDING THE E-CONOMY

2003 Amtex Systems. All rights reserved.

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VoIP - TELECOMMUNICATION
OF THE FUTURE
By V. K. Murugan
Protocols - development of MGCP, MEGACO, SIP, H.323 and several other protocols used in this
technology.
IVR's (Interactive Voice Response Units) - providing several interactive services. And has a huge
market.
Application development that uses VoIP technology. This could be anything from VoIP enabled
web sales centers, IP-PBX to Multi conferencing GUI

VoIP in the market

Seeing the vast potential in this convergence market there are several leading players that provide
service and infrastructure at various levels. Note that the names of the companies is neither exhaustive
nor specifically endorses their products, detailed lists are available on the net. (www.pulver.com or
www.iptelephony.org may be a good place to look).

Infrastructure providers
The VoIP network has several components like Media Gateways, IP phones, Routers and Bridges. This
equipment in turn may need DSP boards, packetizers, codec's and so on. Some of the vendors in this
market are CISCO, 8x8, NMS, 3COM,Gordon Kapes, Lucent, Nortel.

Software element providers

Several components of the VoIP network are software driven. Companies specialize in developing the
stacks, modules, integrate different components with a central Call Agent, development of billing
software, O&M software etc. Some of the companies, which specialize in these areas, are Trillium,
Catapult, Hughes, Tsemantics, Vovida, Portal, funk, Xybridge etc.

Integrators, consultants, network engineering consultants

These people help plan a deployment network and deal with engineering issues. They provide
consultancy for choice of individual components and also help integrate the entire network -e.g.
Telcordia.

Service providers
Provide the VoIP services to users. These people assemble or have the network assembled by
integrators and then deploy them to the markets. e.g. Net2Phone, Dial pad, Microsoft.

Email:
Please e-mail itservices@amtexsystems.com
in order to get more information.
AMTEXSYSTEMS
E-SERVICES TEAM BUILDING THE E-CONOMY

2003 Amtex Systems. All rights reserved.

 e
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VoIP - TELECOMMUNICATION
OF THE FUTURE
By V. K. Murugan
Apart from those mentioned above there are several others in the market including big names like
Siemens, Ericsson etc. The primary vendors may outsource development of certain components to
others.

VoIP is here to stay, and is paving way for affordable telephony. As with any emerging technology,
there are several problems. The QoS (Quality Of Service) is still not well guaranteed in the IP world,
though there are protocols that are addressing this feature. The Internet is still cloggy and poses a
challenge to high quality of voice, there are too many protocols competing with each other-leading to
interoperability issues. But eventually, market dynamics will lead to stabilization and emergence of one
or two leading standards that will be deployed. But very soon, you could chat with your near and dear
ones without having to keep an anxious look at the meter!

Email:
Please e-mail itservices@amtexsystems.com
in order to get more information.
AMTEXSYSTEMS
E-SERVICES TEAM BUILDING THE E-CONOMY

2003 Amtex Systems. All rights reserved.