Voice over IP is one of the greatest inventions of all time. It's such a remarkable service that lets anyone talk to any other person using their home computers. Every voice packets is going over IP communication. The most efficient and comfortable way of communicating from either work or home at a cost 5 times less than the conventional telephone bill. This is good service which saves you a lot of money on your local or international calls but then you need to make a payment deposit upfront before stating to use this service. Once set, you can use this service from anywhere around the world. All you need is a high-speed internet connection in advance to connect to the service provider.

The technology is been researched over and over to define certain new and advanced features to make ever smoother calling experience. And thus, you might find many operators offering this service at a low fee packaged along with your new or existing broadband internet connection. The day is not far when you will only have these VoIP telephone with every user around the world and conventional phone will become history.

So when a VoIP phone call is initiated, the IP phone software or an IP phone converts the data from the analog stream into the digital stream and routes the packets to the endpoint. Now this IP phone equipment is configured or hard-coded with the IP protocols required to perform this job efficiently. The protocol is a set of rules and regulation defined for the technology to work in controlled manner. Here the protocol defines how this voice data be routed to the destination. These protocols also define the controlling procedure that is required to process real time communication between the source and destination without compromising on the performance.

There are many VoIP protocols used today with several VoIP soft phones and the hard phones and the most commonly used one is the H.323 developed by the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) for the purpose of videoconferencing. H.323 is a mix of several other protocols which are used in the videoconferencing, audio transmission (VoIP) and data sharing. Since this protocol was not specifically defined for VoIP, it has some compatibility issues with its usage.

With the advancement going on in the research for a better solution, SIP or Session Initiation Protocol was developed for VoIP and soon become more popular that the complex H.323. MGCP or Media Gateway Control Protocol is another protocol used for VoIP and is focused of how destination control the packet flow with excellent features like call waiting. Major issues happen when these protocols don't work together as expected. Certain scenarios where the VoIP call being placed to another network are consistently facing long delays and other disconnections when protocols don't match. In other words, the destination network uses different set of protocols.

Despite several other technical glitches the technology is constantly improving upon developing a better and more convenient solution for everyone around the globe. Making a VoIP solution cost effective is a great way to start. Now the baby is grown into a mature person where it still needs constant care to stay fit and fine all the time. The speed at which VoIP is being improved gives us a hint that they are very poised to take over the telephone market by replacing the old traditional telecommunication systems completely. Further improvements will provide greater scope of convenience for the users to get used to a relatively easy addiction like the traditional phones.