A History of Voip

The use of Voip (voice over IP) is increasingcommercial success it did suffer from a variety
rapidly year on year. It is predicted that by theof problems. The lack of high speed internet
end of 2009 there will be 256 million users ofaccess meant that the quality could be poor and
VOIP around the world. The advantages of VOIPthe flow of voice slow. Early voip calls where like
in terms of scale, cost and easy of use are nowusing walkie-talkies to communicate in terms of
commonly agreed upon. But where did VOIPquality of signal. Another issue was the fact that
begin? Who invented VOIP?the two computers that where talking to each
The history of Voip extends further back into theother needed to have the same soundcards with
world of pre internet that most people wouldthe same drivers for the software to work. This
think. The first Voip calls where made as far backobviously limited the use of the software and the
as 1973. The capability to send voice across aeffectiveness of the process. Much of the
digital network was pioneered on the ARPANETtransmission was done via modems and was
network, the precursor to the modern Internet. Ittherefore utilizing traditional telephone lines and
only carried data and voice between the privateproviding a service that was of a worse quality to
network of computers on the APRPANET gridthat of a normal phone call.
but the seeds for the VOIP revolution whereOnce Vocaltec had laid the foundations the
sown by these pioneers.increase in the use of VOIP was fairly rapid
Voip continued to developed amongst a smallaccounting for 1% of all US phone calls by 1998.
cache of computer users who used theOther companies began to develop software for
technology to communicate with each other in athe VOIP market and also hardware in the terms
sort of geeky version of CB radio. Any twoof hard phone and network switches. The
computers connected on the same network couldexpansion of broadband also aided the growth of
use voip technology but there was no widespreadVOIP by increasing the quality of calls and
adoption of the technology.reducing the latency issues that effected VOIP at
The first major step towards the VoIP servicesthe beginning. By the year 2000 VOIP calls in the
that many of use to today was the introductionUS where about 3% of the total.
of the software called "Internet Phone" from aThe popularity of VOIP has increased since the
US based company called Vocaltec. The firstturn of the millennium and with free VOIP
publicly available of f the shelve internet phoneprovider Skype currently having registered a
software from Vocaltec was the catalyst for thestaggering 400 million user accounts at the end of
explosion in VOIP use. The Vocaltec software2008. With the growing availability of VOIP
was able to run on a home PC and utilized muchservices for mobile phones it looks as if the
of the same hardware products that Voipadoption of VOIP will continue to expand rapidly.
services use today in terms of soundcards,Tony Heywood ©
speakers and headsets. The Internet PhoneVoip is the word on everyone’s lips as far as
software differed from most modern VOIPcheap and fast calls is concerned. This article aims
services in that it used the H.323 protocol insteadto outline a little of the history of the
of the SIP protocol that is more ubiquitous today.development of VOIP and the companies behind
Although Internet Phone was an immediateits growth.