One of the most important things to point out is that VoIP is not limited to voice communication. In fact, a number of efforts have been made to change this popular marketing term to better reflect the fact that VoIP means voice, video, and data conferencing. All such attempts have failed up to this point, but do understand that video telephony and real-time text communication (ToIP), for example, is definitely within the scope of the VoIP.
VoIP is important because, for the first time in more than 100 years, there is an opportunity to bring about significant change in the way that people communicate. In addition to being able to use the phones we have today to communicate in real-time, we also have the possibility of using pure IP-based phones, including desktop and wireless phones. We also have the ability to use videophones, much like those seen in science fiction movies. Rather than calling home to talk to the family, a person can call home to see the family.
One of the more interesting aspects of VoIP is that we also have the ability to integrate a stand-alone telephone or videophone with the personal computer. One can use a computer entirely for voice and video communications (softphones), use a telephone for voice and the computer for video, or can simply use the computer in conjunction with a separate voice / video phone to provide data conferencing functions, like application sharing , electronic whiteboarding, and text chat.
t is very easy to get into a discussion that is very technical and confusing to most readers. The purpose of this section will be to provide a very high-level overview of Voice over IP (VoIP) aimed at those who do not consider themselves experts in the subject and hopefully with enough clarity that it serves as a good introduction to most readers.
Many people have used a computer and a microphone to record a human voice or other sounds. The process involves sampling the sound that is heard by the computer at a very high rate (at least 8,000 times per second or more) and storing those "samples" in memory or in a file on the computer. Each sample of sound is just a very tiny bit of the person's voice or other sound recorded by the computer. The computer has the wherewithal to take all of those samples and play them, so that the listener can hear what was recorded. VoIP is based on the same idea, but the difference is that the audio samples are not stored locally. Instead, they are sent over the IP network to another computer and played there.