Introduction to IP telephony & VoIP

IP Telephony KAUSHAL BHAVSAR, PRATIKĀR TECHNOLOGIES

Who am I?

Tech Geek Entrepreneur Inventor

Mentor Activist Human

What is IP Telephony?TELEPHONY OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL, THAT IS!

Some backgroundLET’S CLEAR SOME BASIC CONCEPTS FIRST

PSTN – Public Switched Telephony Network

PSTN Line

Enterprise Telephony

PSTN Line PBX

PBX – Private Branch ExchangeALLOWS YOU TO HAVE YOUR OWN VIRTUAL PSTN

1995 - VoIPVOICE OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL BY VOCALTECH

Why VoIP?

Can add features easily

Software based

Optimum Bandwidth use

Mobility ….

What is VoIP? Internet-based communication based on a Virtual PSTN

Not just limited to voice!◦ Video◦ Audio◦ Fax◦ Text/SMS

VoIP is an important subset of Internet Telephony

How to VoIP? It’s very simple (in terms of hardware) to setup VoIP.

You need: ◦ Internet◦ (Old) Computer◦ IP Phones (or computers with headphones)

But why use VoIP? Organizations can benefit greatly. Some killing features are:

◦ Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS)◦ Automated Call Distribution (ACD)◦ Predictive Call Dialling◦ Automated Call Dialling◦ Answering Machine Detection◦ Text to speech◦ Speech to text synthesis◦ Integration with Database systems◦ Click-to-call for customers◦ Low-cost communication

Getting started Several solutions allow you to start a VoIP network within no time. ◦ Best open-source software – Asterisk◦ Hardware – Cisco VoIP products◦ Best proprietary software – Microsoft Lync (for

enterprise), Skype (for consumers)

AsteriskWORLD’S BEST OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE PBX

Asterisk◦ Works on popular Linux distributions◦ Also available as a standalone Linux distribution called

AsteriskNow. ◦ Supports VoIP.

Automated Attendant◦ A “sweet voice” that greets you when you call a number. ◦ Mostly plays a message and asks you to dial extension

number of the person◦ May be, takes the voice message too!

How Asterisk works

PSTN Line

Asterisk features

IVR AMI AGI

Dialplans Voicemail Call routing

ACD Automated Attendant FAX

Automated Attendant◦ A “sweet voice” that greets you when you call a number. ◦ Mostly plays a message and asks you to dial extension

number of the person◦ May be, takes the voice message too!

FAX◦ Asterisk can be used to send and receive Fax. ◦ Only supports TIFF format◦ There is no “interface”, leaving that part for the “web

developers”.

Call Routing◦ Can perform conditional or unconditional routing of calls◦ Can route calls to local or international numbers too!◦ Works within the LAN also.

Voicemail◦ Records caller’s message and saves in a sound file

Dialplans◦ Structured sequences of commands that are fired when a

phone call is received◦ Dialplans can be used to invoke native Asterisk

commands or even system commands. ◦ Typical dialplan would play “music-on-hold” while the

agents are too busy to answer the call.

Automated call distribution◦ Asterisk will distribute the calls based on pre-decided

sequence between a queue of agents◦ The sequence can be First-come-first-serve, Round robin

or even a random one.

AMI◦ Asterisk Management Interface.◦ Set of APIs that allow you to control Asterisk server from

remote location.

AGI◦ Asterisk Gateway Interface.◦ You can run your own C/C++/C#/Python/Ruby/Php/Shell

scripts etc when a phone call is received. ◦ Most powerful feature!

IVR◦ Interactive Voice Response◦ Grabs the DTMF tones from the caller to give a “menu-

driven” interactive experience◦ You see this in mostly all customer support centers

Career in VoIP◦ VoIP is the Future. ◦ Asterisk is the best way to get started with VoIP◦ VoIP career is a recession-proof career for students of

CE/IT as well as EC because◦ No programming knowledge necessary◦ Basic networking knowledge will be enough◦ Rest, you can figure out.

◦ Some certifications – CISCO, EC-Council, etc.

Thank youMAIL ME ON [email protected]