Hi,
and welcome to this course titled Protocol Deep Dive:
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).
My name is Navidut Tauhid,
and I'm a computer engineer with over 16 years of
experience in the tech industry.
I have worked as a cloud architect and a unified
communication and collaboration consultant.
I have helped numerous organizations implement and optimize
their cloud and collaboration systems.
I'll be your guide as we dive deep into Voice over Internet Protocol, VoIP.
In this module, we are going to discuss what is Voice over IP Protocol.
What are its purpose and benefits and how it
evolved and became so popular today.
How a typical Voiceover IP call works.
What all happens behind the scene in a VoIP call. Then we will explore
the benefits VoIP calls offer over traditional phone system, and the
challenges and considerations for VoIP protocol.
There are so many people making calls every minute, to a colleague,
a friend, or a family member, from one part of the world to the
other, over an application on their smartphone or computer, or
maybe an IP phone. Among these calls,
a big part is millions of VoIP calls on different devices
connecting all of us over the internet on a daily basis.
We can't imagine how would the world be like without VoIP calls today. In
a time when everything is getting smarter, we will be incomplete and not
so smart really without VoIP calls around.
VoIP allows us to make phone calls using our internet connection,
which is more convenient and often less expensive than using the traditional
phone lines. It also allows us to make calls from anywhere with an internet
connection rather than being tied to a specific location.
Now, what is VoIP? VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol,
and it refers to the technology that allows the transmission of voice
communication over the internet or other IP‑based networks. What really
happens in a VoIP call, and how does a VoIP call work?
How does the audio or the voice is transmitted as digital data packet over
the internet? So, when you speak into your microphone during a VoIP call, the
sound waves from your voice are converted into an electrical signal by the
microphone of your phone or computer.
This electrical signal is then converted into digital data
by an analog‑to‑digital converter, ADC.
This process of converting analog audio signals into
digital data packet is called encoding.
The digital data is then divided into small packets, which are
sent over the internet or other IP‑based network to the
destination phone using the internet protocol,
IP, which is the primary communication protocol used to transmit
data over the internet. At the destination phone,
the packets are reassembled,
and the digital data is converted back into an electrical
signal by a digital‑to‑analog converter, DAC.
This electrical signal is then sent to the destination phone's speaker now,
where it is converted back into sound waves that can be heard. This way, audio
flows back and forth between the two phones during a VoIP call, and, with the
audio data being transmitted as digital data packets over the internet. Each of
these packets contain a small portion of the overall audio data for the call. So
if you miss a packet, you miss part of the conversation.
Imagine you're on a VoIP call and every time the conversation got interesting, a
packet would drop out, and the whole conversation will either be meaningless or
will lose its purpose. VoIP protocol converts analog audio signals into digital
data packets to be transmitted over the internet or other IP networks in a
similar way to other types of data, such as an email or web page. The internet
is everywhere today. It is very fast and quite reliable now. We have 5G being
rolled out. Broadband connections are very common and are accessible to many of
us.
Since VoIP uses the internet to transmit its data, we don't need a
separate infrastructure for calling, and that's the biggest advantage of using VoIP protocol for calling.