IP Telephony [Hardcover]

Olivier Hersent (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 9, 1999

This book provides a comprehensive practical overview of the technology behind Internet Telephony, giving essential information to IT professionals who need to understand the background and explore the issues involved in migrating the existing telephony infrastructure to an IP based real time communication service. Assuming a working knowledge of IP and ISDN networking, it addresses the technical aspects of real-time applications over IP, with an in-depth coverage of voice and video applications and protocols. Drawing on their extensive research and practical development experience in VoIP from its earliest stages, the authors give you access to all the relevant standards and cutting-edge techniques in a single resource.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Voice communications over the Internet--particularly the direct, sender-initiated kind--haven't yet taken off, but lots of smart people say Internet telephony is going to be huge before long. In IP Telephony, three experts on getting voice signals from here to there, intact, via Internet Protocol (IP) networks hold forth on the state of the art. Like Voice over IP (VoIP) itself, their discussion is largely academic. Rather than show how to implement VoIP with any of the tools available for that purpose, the authors put most of their effort into elaborating on the specifications that govern (or at least aspire to govern) Internet telephony. It's an approach that IP telephony software developers will appreciate.

The denseness of the prose in this book is offset by high-quality conceptual diagrams. In particular, the timelines do a great job of explaining signal sequences, and flow charts communicate logical processes effectively. In the sections on the mechanics of converting sounds into bits (which are loaded with equations and other descriptions of algorithms), the discussion of the phenomena that cause signals to degrade is especially clear. As a whole, IP Telephony is a good description of a developing technology. --David Wall

Topics covered: The appeal of Internet telephony, and the progress to date on standards for implementing it. The emerging H.323 protocol suite gets lots of attention, as does the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the Media Gateway Controller Protocol (MGCP). Coverage also includes algorithms for converting audio information into digital data band back again, as well as quality-of-service (QoS) and conferencing with multicasting.

From the Back Cover

I recommend this book to all VoIP engineers, analysts, and IT managers who really want to know what they are talking about on the net, enjoy!"
-Jeff Pulver, founder of the VON (Voice On the Net) coalition, and the founder and president of pulver.com

Internet Telephony is now one of the most important and fastest growing technologies on the Internet, providing a viable technical and economical alternative to current telecommunication networks. Network providers and major companies are thus investigating how this emerging technology can be implemented, and at what cost and savings, in their organizations.

This book provides a comprehensive practical overview of the technology behind Internet Telephony, giving essential information to IT professionals who need to understand the background and explore the issues involved in migrating the existing telephony infrastructure to an IP based real time communication service. Assuming a working knowledge of IP and ISDN networking, it addresses the technical aspects of real-time applications over IP, with an in-depth coverage of voice and video applications and protocols. Drawing on their extensive research and practical development experience in VoIP from its earliest stages, the authors give you access to all the relevant standards and cutting-edge techniques in a single resource.

IP Telephony is organized into three clearly structured sections, focusing on protocols, voice technology and networks with a step-by-step approach. The protocols section sets IP telephony in context and then covers H.323, SIP and MGCP in detail, examining in turn their pros and cons, and using examples of particular cases and scenarios. The voice technology section describes voice quality, including the ETSI TIPHON approach, and voice coding, with summary comments on the applicability to VoIP telephone gateways. The final section on networks addresses Quality of Service (QoS) issues, explores dimensioning a VoIP network, and introduces Multicast routing, including a perspective on security and MBONE applications.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 456 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st edition (December 9, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201619105
• ISBN-13: 978-0201619102
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,613,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive overview of IP Telephony, March 31, 2000

By 

Anwar Rizal - See all my reviews

This review is from: IP Telephony (Hardcover)

This book is a very good overview of IP Telephony and other related technologies such as multicasting network and quality over service. I am a software developer and not the telecommunication engineer, and surprsingly the book helps me a lot in understanding IP Telephony as a software developer.

First part of the book explains three standards H.323 of ITU, SIP of IETF, and MGCP. Second part explains Voice Technology, and finally , the third part explains Network part. They are explained quite clearly and the writers not only know what they are saying, but also they know how to say it right.

Although I do give 5 stars , I prefer to give this book 4.5 stars since I don't think one can undestand the book if they have not read the H.323 specification before, have no idea about multicasting, ISDN, SS7, RTP/RTCP. So, if you have no idea about all of the issues..., I don't think this book will help you. Read H.323 specification, IP multicasting, RTP/RTCP (or other multimedia and networking), QoS, before and then read this book. It does not mean that you have to understand all the stuffs, just a little knowledge for dummies for each is enough.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, November 9, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: IP Telephony (Hardcover)

This book is disappointing. However, to be fair, all the books I read so far on IP-Telephony are disappointing. The problem is that this is a new and fast evolving area, it is hard to understand all facets of the technology to write a comprehensible and easily-understandable book. People who are in-the-know are probably working on very specific projects on IP-Telephony in some start-ups (meaning that they don't have time nor energy to write a book and don't know the entire field well enough to write anyway). That left people who are mostly "pretenders."

Take this book for example, it is so badly written that I doubt anyone without prior exposure to IP-Telephony can understand the material. There are so many acronyms used without proper definition, so many graphs used without meaningful captions or explanation in the text. Many descriptions in the text were copied straightly from standard documents (which are themselves not readable). And it is quite obvious that the authors do not know many of the subjects that they talk about - basically, they just "wing" it. The authors lack a global picture of how different standards relate to each other and interoperate. For example, the dscription of MGCP is so confusing it is obvious that the authors have no idea how it relates to H.323, SIP. etc.

Avoid this book. Sorry I do not have any recommendation to a good book.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent VoIP Book!, January 20, 2000

By 

Greg Herlein (San Francisco, California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: IP Telephony (Hardcover)

This book has the best description of RTP, H.323, SIP and MGCP I have seen yet. It's sufficiently technical that it answers what a programmer needs, yet it's at a level higher that the actual specs so you can quickly arrive at a high-level understanding.

I personally found it on the bookshelf at a local store and thought it worth the risk of a purchase... and I find that my money was very well spent indeed. I highly recommend it to anyone who is not already an expert Internet Telephony.