Seven Myths About VoIP

Let us consider Steven Cherry’s, “Seven Myths About Voice over IP: VoIP is turning telephony into just another Internet application - and a cheap one at that” [Cherry 2005]

Myth	Status
“VoIP is free”	Not quite, but given a flat rate Internet subscription the incremental cost is small.
“The only difference between VoIP and regular telephony is the price”	About the only thing they have in common is “voice” content and “calls”.
“Quality of service isn’t an issue nowadays, because there’s plenty of bandwidth in the network”	latency, jitter, and packet loss can still matter, but over-provisioning goes a long way to avoiding problems
“VoIP can’t replace regular telephony, because it still can’t guarantee quality of service”	MPLS and QoS aware routing are used to provision VoIP services
“VoIP is just another data application”	Issues about providing 911, lawful intercept, etc.
“VoIP isn’t secure”	SRTP + MIKEY + tunnels ==> very high security
“A Phone is a Phone is a Phone”	Modern phones are computers - with all the problems and advantages that brings!

Slide Notes

Steven Cherry, “Seven Myths About Voice over IP: VoIP is turning telephony into just another Internet application - and a cheap one at that”, IEEE Spectrum, Volume 42, Number 3, March 2005, pp. 52-57

Transcript

[slide544] So now that you've heard what you've heard over the last nine hours, let's go back to those seven myths. The first one, is VoIP free? No, it's not, because even with the flat rate internet subscription, we still have some cost. But the incremental cost is very small. So it's not free, but the incremental cost is small. The only difference between VoIP and regular telephony is the price. Not at all, right? The only thing in common is, something maybe about voice and something about calls. But other than that, they're really completely different. Quality of service isn't an issue nowadays, because there's plenty of bandwidth. Well, latency, jitter, and packet loss can still matter; but over-provisioning goes a long way to getting rid of most of this. VoIP can't replace telephones, because it can't guarantee quality of service. Well, today, MPLS and QoS aware routing basically let us support VoIP services really very well. VoIP's just another data application. What we saw, no, there were problems about providing 911 services for emergency, lawful intercept, and other kinds of services like that. VoIP isn't secure. No, we saw that with SRTP plus MIKEY plus tunnels, we could provide very high security. And a phone is a phone is a phone. Well, actually, modern phones are actually really computers. And they have all the kinds of advantages and disadvantages that come with that. So hopefully, this gives you new light on those seven myths that we started out with yesterday.