VOIP Gotachas - Cheap or Free Calls With A Catch
07/02/09 19:58 Filed in: Apple VIOP
VOIP is not all perfect - Here's a few disadvantages of IP phone telephony:
▪ You need reliable internet access to make calls with consistent quality. Voice in general is not very demanding, but adding video rapidly ups the bandwidth requirements.
▪ Your computer, or IP Phones and the routers they connect through depend on AC power, unlike our regular land-line PSTN phones which get power from the telephone company. It may not be suitible for emergency calling during an outage.
▪ IP networks, particularly residential internet connections are easily congested as you often share the total available bandwidth in your neighborhood with other internet users. This can cause voice and video quality to degrade - or the call connection to be dropped completely during peak usage.
▪ Ethernet and WiFi based IP Phones, like other network devices can be subjected to Denial Of Service (DOS) attacks especially if the device is given a public IP address or protected by a FireWall.
▪ Due to the latency implicit in Analog to Digital conversion and IP routing and hops to get from point A to Point B - there is some protocol overhead so VOIP may not work as well on satellite internet and other high-latency internet connections.
▪ You need reliable internet access to make calls with consistent quality. Voice in general is not very demanding, but adding video rapidly ups the bandwidth requirements.
▪ Your computer, or IP Phones and the routers they connect through depend on AC power, unlike our regular land-line PSTN phones which get power from the telephone company. It may not be suitible for emergency calling during an outage.
▪ IP networks, particularly residential internet connections are easily congested as you often share the total available bandwidth in your neighborhood with other internet users. This can cause voice and video quality to degrade - or the call connection to be dropped completely during peak usage.
▪ Ethernet and WiFi based IP Phones, like other network devices can be subjected to Denial Of Service (DOS) attacks especially if the device is given a public IP address or protected by a FireWall.
▪ Due to the latency implicit in Analog to Digital conversion and IP routing and hops to get from point A to Point B - there is some protocol overhead so VOIP may not work as well on satellite internet and other high-latency internet connections.
