VoIP? A Question of Perspective
By Gary Audin, Delphi, Inc.
Published 2004, Posted June 2004
Abstract:
Moving to VoIP raises fundamental questions for both data and voice sides of
the ‘net. There is an inherent dilemma when it comes to building integrated
voice/data networks—the problem of perspective. To the telephony world, the fact
that voice is “mission critical” is so painfully obvious that it goes without
mentioning.
However, in the data world—and particularly the IP world—applications are
graded as “best effort,” “better-than-best effort” and “critical,” with “best
effort” being the most common. Many applications have not moved to an IP network
because of concerns about security, performance and reliability.
Given voice’s mission-critical status, any company planning an integrated
voice/data network must consider a wide range of elements. While it has been
proven that VoIP phone calls work, we must now examine all the other functions:
VoIP’s features, administration, billing, performance and management issues.
Many business questions arise when confronting convergence:
Looking ahead, the most important task will be to make VoIP ubiquitous while
at the same time making it interoperable with a variety of VoIP products, as
well as with the legacy telephone environment.
About the Author:
Gary Audin has over 40 years of
computer and communications experience. He has planned, designed, specified,
implemented and operated data, LAN and telephone networks. These have included
local area, national and international networks as well as VoIP and IP
convergent networks in the U.S., Europe and Asia. He has advised domestic and
international venture capital and investment bankers in communications, VOIP,
and microprocessor technologies.
He has been an independent consultant for 25 years. During this time he
designed a national bank ATM network. He specified the functional requirements
for a wide area and local area network for the data transmission of the City of
New York. He also designed a statewide multi-agency frame relay network for
Louisiana.
Mr. Audin has been published extensively in Data Communications Magazine,
Business Communications Review, Infosystems, Computerworld, Computer Business
News, Auerbach Publications and 4 other magazines. He has made over 200
presentations at trade shows including INTERFACE, COMNET, INFO, PC Expo,
VoiceCon and MultimediaCom. He has been the Keynote speaker at several user
conferences. He is a founder of the ANSI X.9 committee. He is a senior member of
the IEEE. He is on the steering committee for the VoiceCon conferences.
He has a BSEE from New Jersey Institute of Technology and graduate work in
Computer Science at Syracuse University. He has presented over 2000 seminars for
BCR, Telcordia, ACUTA, Nortel, Datapro Research, American Management
Association, Washington University (St. Louis), Princeton, IBM, NCR, Burroughs,
Sperry, UNISYS, Bell Northern Research and the American Institute of Banking. He
has been an Adjunct Professor at Pace University and an instructor at Boston
University.
