Small Biz Technology Reviews | VoIP for SME’s – Would it Work?

Much have been written about VoIP, its advantages have been highlighted specially for home users who are already using it as their primary tool for communications. However, is VoIP the ideal communication tool for business? VoIP means Voice Over Internet Protocol or IP telephony which started to be used in 1973 and evolved as the VoIP we have at present.

VoIP used to be an unknown segment of the communication industry wherein PSTN lines for landline phones and GSM for mobile phones are dominant majorities. VoIP for a common layman could often be hard to comprehend. Until the time that Skype through the integration of its framework in VoIP that most common people were able to have a solid grasp on what VoIP is all about.

VoIP for home users are quite easy to setup and use. One could easily have VoIP by;

• Using a VoIP telephone
• Using a “normal” telephone with a VoIP adapter or ATA
• Using a computer with speakers and a microphone and Softphones

VoIP is more economical and could offer lots of flexibilities. One could use two VoIP lines simultaneously using an ATA or analog telephone adapter or by using a Softphone or software phones directly through their computers wherein users have the flexible means to do 3-way calling, call forwarding, automatic redial, and caller ID; features that traditional telecommunications companies normally charge extra for. Same features and benefits that could also be applied to business communication needs. VoIP connections differ for residential use and business use. For residential set-ups with a PC directly connected to the internet, VoIP calls are quite easy to handle and manage.

But for businesses running several PCs connected to a network, certain issues have been noted which should be carefully considered by any business who would like to use VoIP for their communication needs.

Among them are; Reliability and Quality. Reliability suffers since most VoIP devices are running over a NAT (Network Address Translators) connected along with other network peripherals, workstations and other devices sharing a single network address. Incoming calls going through the NAT might oftentimes be dropped due to the confusion of the NAT to what device it is going to send a particular call unlike when it is in a home setup without NAT wherein calls are directly routed to the device. NAT poses a big problem for the VoIP setup.

However, there have been several technologies that provided solutions with the use of NAT in VoIP.

• First is by using STUN. STUN is Simple Traversal of UDP through NAT. STUN is a protocol that allows two destinations to have peer to peer connections through the NAT. Most VoIP device or providers already have that. However, STUN is only ideal for consumer NAT and oftentimes is not 100% reliable since it only works well between two consumer NAT.

STUN is not ideal for Enterprise NATs which are more secure and does not allow UDP traffic. UDP is where all VoIP data traffic is sent. So if you are planning to set-up VoIP for business, specially if you are using Enterprise NAT, additional solutions should be carefully considered;

• Among them could be the utilization of a relay wherein the VoIP data from an incoming call is routed to that relay server which in turn directs the call to the destination. The standard for this is called TURN – Traversal Using Relay over NAT. Although TURN is 100% more reliable, it is expensive since businesses should be able to pay extra bandwidth to minimize the cost of delays.

• Along with that it is most often advised by experts in VoIP to utilize another technology which is the ICE framework. ICE which stands for Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE), developed by the IETF’s MMUSIC working group, provides a framework to unify the various NAT traversal techniques. This enables VoIP clients to successfully traverse the variety of firewalls that may exist between a remote user and a network. ICE defines a standardized method for VoIP clients to determine what type of NAT firewalls exist between clients and determine a set of IP addresses by which clients can establish contact. Using a number of protocols and network connectivity mechanisms, such as STUN, Traversal Using Relay NAT (TURN) and Realm Specific IP (RSIP), ICE learns about the network topology in which the clients exist and the various sets of network addresses by which these devices can communicate.When an ICE-enabled client initiates or wishes to communicate with another device, it first collects as many sets of IP addresses as possible from sources such as STUN, TURN, RSIP and locally configured addresses that can provide information on addresses where the client can receive IP traffic. A major benefit that ICE provides is the ability to unify the information provided by these various sources of IP addresses to create as many paths as possible by which the endpoints can be reached.

With all these technological solutions, a business who wants to make full use of VoIP as a primary or major communication tool would be able to do so. To save more, it is much better to maximize the use of STUN all the time and then later on once there would be connection or relay problems encountered in VoIP, one could make full use of the backup solutions being provided by TURN & ICE.

VoIP today enables users both for home use and businesses to be able to call upon PSTN lines at a much cheaper cost than when using traditional telecommunication services which could mean lots of savings specially for those businesses who relies mostly on communications to be able to deliver services to their customers. Recently, new technological breakthroughs were released like mobile phones running over VoIP which again could bring in lots of benefits not only to consumers but to businesses alike. Benefits in terms of savings, efficiency & reliability. Understanding how VoIP works is very vital to all those who are into business who wants to come up with better communication solutions both for their internal and external customers. VoIP a used to be underdog name in the telecommunications industry would later on take over the world of telecommunications like no other technology had done before.