Voip Gateway Basics

Translating voice calls between digital for the Internet and analogue for telephone systems is a challenging task, and that is the task that VoIP gateways perform by switching the calls between analogue and digital. Directing calls to specific users is also a function performed by the gateways. Within VoIP there are also different protocols, and the gateways are able to translate one protocol into the next protocol. This protocol translation is important because it enables different VoIP systems to talk to each other. Because of all of these benefits it is easy to see why VoIP gateways are highly recommended for any VoIP service.

More VoIP gateway products have become available to customers as the popularity of VoIP as a stable telephone service has increased. Mediatrex Telecom and Cisco System are two examples of manufacturers that produce leading VoIP gateway systems.

VoIP gateways can either be hardware or software based. The hardware gateways tend to cost more than software gateways and can be purchased as a stand alone box. They tend to be viewed as more reliable and do not consume computer power.

Buyers of VoIP gateways can select from products that offer numerous phone, fax machine, PBX and STN support capabilities.

At the lower end of the market, a basic VoIP gateway comes with a phone jack, Ethernet router and firewall can be purchased for under two hundred dollars. To offer basic functionality they have ports for the phone jack, the broadband modem, and the computer or network connection. They are suitable for a home or a small office.

A mid level gateway offers additional interfaces and features such as security capabilities like encryption and network voice compression.

At the higher end of the market are VoIP gateways that cost several thousand dollars and are widely used by telephone carriers and large companies. They support thousands of channels for advanced voice services, such as IVR - Interactive Voice Response - that allows callers to select an option from a voice menu. They also offer other functions like conference calling and call recording.

There are new features and functions for VoIP gateways being built all of the time, such as support for emerging VoIP standards and faster translations. Many of these improvements are software based and therefore can be sent to customers very quickly and cheaper in the form of a software upgrade.

One can expect to see many more enhancements and improvements before VoIP and VoIP gateways can be considered a matured and saturated market. The end user benefits from these improvements because quality and range of services increase while overall call costs tend to be constantly driven downwards.

By: Jamal Brewington

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By Jamal Brewington. At voip.besttipsonline.com you can get VoIP tips, as well as an introduction to VoIP.