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VoIP Hacks: Tips & Tools for Internet Telephony Review by Duff
VOIP : for the serious home user or enterprise deployment
Voice over IP, as with most emerging technologies, in the process of shaking up the world, in this case Public Switched Telephone Network and Plain Old Telephony Service. The author starts of the book off at the most basic entry point for most consumers into the world of VoIP, which is background about the main commerical carriers such as Vonage. The introductary chapters continue to build on the most elementary approach, giving the reader advice on modifying the soft phone[s] that the respective carriers will allow or provide to the consumers, such as alternating ring tones. It isn't long before Ted is explaining how to compeletly re-wire the house over to a pure VoIP infastructure using the existing wiring in your home as well as an, or the ATA provided by the carrier. While this is undoubtly over the casual readers head and possibly comfort level it is good see that this option is explored and explained for those that might not be aware of this solution.
Of course, other VoIP solutions are explored. Skype, is mentioned and basic features are explored, although the detail provided on Skype is not as detailed as those of other solutions, which maybe due to the coverage for Skype under the Skype Hacks book. However, the coverage for building your own VoIP via Asterisk is quite detailed and in-depth. Options that explored for this approach, are call forwarding, hold music, voice mail applications and distinctive ring as well as basic advice on setting up and compiling the application. The process appears to be able to easy to implement, but alas was not tried due to this reviewers use of Skype for his VoIP needs.
Also in the closing chapters of the book, issues of improving QoS are addressed as is the legacy signalling protocol that H.323 is since the adoption of SIP. Since QoS is vital to ensuring that VoIP traffic receives the bandwidth that it needs Ted gives us some basic commands to find out if there is jitter [dropped datagrams] and some ways to fix this issue. However, it should be noted that this chapter, as with most of the later half of the book is more in line for larger scale operations that use Linux/Unix and building their own office VoIP solutions.
To summarize, VoIP hacks does offer something for everyone, although the hacks provided in the latter chapters are geared to the enterprise level deployment of VoIP. That's not to say that the information is not relevant or even eye opening, just the average home user will find little to apply this to.