history of Voip
...same software. Although the sound quality was poor, often high levels of static, this effort was actually the first IP phone. The term VoIP was first used by the VoIP Forum, which was a group of major companies including Cisco, Vocaltec and 3Com, to promote and develop the use of the International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) H.323 protocol. The forum also worked on the standardization of directory services and the use of touch-tone standards for accessing voicemail. The ability to transfer voice over the internet, rather than the PSTN was first made possible in February 1995 when Vocaltec released its Internet Phone software. This software was designed to run on a standard personal computer (PC) equipped with a sound card, speakers, microphone, and modem. The software encoded and compressed the voice signal, converting it into IP packets that were then transmitted over the internet. However this PC-to-PC internet telephony only worked if both parties were using the Internet Phone software. Very common in this technology were a number of severe limitations. For example, no standard ringing protocols meant that it was necessary for both parties to pre-arrange the time of the call in order to be available to make the final connections themselves. Users also had to contend...