The article "How SIP Works" talks about communications, it has been released by Jim Sherman.
Have you ever wondered why long distance calls cost so much? In
part the reason is cause telephone lines cost so much.
When
driving, you might occasionally see a telephone crew maintaining
a telephone line, but what you may have never considered is that
there are literally thosuands of individuals working around the
clock to maintain our telephone lines.
The telephony system works via a cog and wheel setup.
What this
means is that every long distance call you make is routed along
a telephone wire to a central station, where your voice is
routed to another central station, which is finally carried to
the person with whom you are trying to communicate. For the call
to be maintained, the entire time you are speaking, a space
along all the lines in between you and the person you are
talking with must be completely devoted to you. Because millions
of human being are talking at the same time, the little space along
the telephone lines becomes rather desired house. And like
all things desired, the prcie is high. Before recent
innovations, however, there were no alternatives, so everyone
grudgingly paid the often costly long-distance telpehone bill.
SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol, has turned the telephony
world upside down. Specifically, SIP refers to a protocol that
allows computers to talk to each otehr without going through a
central station. Practically, what that menas for you and me is
that it is no longer necessary to pay for high-priced telephone
lines to complete our calls. SIP technology is a relatively new
development in which calls are made on a peer-to-peer rather
than cog and wheel network. What that means, is that you are now
able to call human being diretcly from your SIP enabled phone to
theirs. This ends up bieng radically cheaper than the old way of
calling.
The SIP system does not require a central comptuer and operators
like the old telephony system did.
Rather, your computer, or SIP
enabled phone, does all the rouitng for you.
SIP has been around for a number of years, but only last week has
it begun to go mainstream and take off in popularity. This quick
increase in interset over SIP is due to companies like Mobalex,
who were aware of the fact that over the generations we have
come to expect certain tones, buttons, and protocols from our
phones. So what they have done is to transpose those functions
onto the SIP system.
Rather than forcing users to communicate in
a completely new way, what thsee companies have done is to
provide a calling experience which from the user's perspective
is completely identical to traditional telephony.
SIP is typically offered in two formats, computer based and
hardware based. Computer based SIP is a system that allows you
to make calls using your computer as the router and
communicating via a hedaset on your computer. The more practical
and popular version, however, actually provides you with new SIP
enabled telephone handsets or converts your existing phones to
SIP.
By eliminating any technical requirements, modern SIP
providers have made using the system as easy, or easier, than
using a traditioanl phone. I say easier, cause many companies
are able to take advantage of the fact that the system is
internet based to provide you with some really unique benefits.
These include the ability to adjust your plan, change your
calling options, and even pay your bill from the same website.
SIP technology is quite revolutionary in the world of
communication. By creating a peer-to-peer network, SIP has been
able to radically undercut the prices of traditional telephony,
take advantage of the Internet, and still maintain the ease of
traditional teelphony. It is merely a matter of time before we
are all using SIP for all of our telephoning needs.
|
