The Internet telephone-a new paradigm

This work is an overview of the technology used for speech communication over packet-based networks such as the Internet. Internet telephony is the use of a packet switched data network (most usually the global Internet, but it has certainly been implemented on other packet networks) for the transport of speech information between the participants in a real-time conversation. As such it is a major departure from the traditional use of such networks, which have been designed and optimised for the delivery of textual and other non-real-time data with guaranteed integrity, regardless of the time required to do so. This paper presents a technical discussion of currently deployed products and services.