The evolution of VoIP telephony
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2025 3:58 am
Real-time transport protocol (RTP) is a way of structuring data packets so that they can be delivered across the internet at lightning speeds and reassembled into a smooth flowing stream suitable for delivering voice or multimedia in a natural way. Without such a protocol, voice over IP would be impossible.
When wired terrestrial france telegram phone systems first came into use in the 1880s, each call was carried in the form of a continuous electrical signal travelling along a single wire or series of wires. If you wanted to call Birmingham instead of London, an operator would physically connect you to a different wiring route by rearranging a jack plug. That method continued almost unchanged until the 1960s.
Telephone calls that could find their own way across a congested telephone network came with the introduction of digitally switched exchanges based upon the newly available transistors.
When data is streamed across today’s internet, it is divided into a series of packets and wrapped inside instructions that help it to perform the requisite switching. Each packet can then squeeze through internet traffic bottlenecks as bandwidth permits. Although it is really fast, internet traffic isn’t unlike urban road traffic – with queues, red lights, crossings, one-way streets and toll bridges to navigate. As a result, it is unlikely that packets will arrive in the same order in which they were sent, so each packet is marked with its proper place in the stream so that it can be reassembled on arrival.
When wired terrestrial france telegram phone systems first came into use in the 1880s, each call was carried in the form of a continuous electrical signal travelling along a single wire or series of wires. If you wanted to call Birmingham instead of London, an operator would physically connect you to a different wiring route by rearranging a jack plug. That method continued almost unchanged until the 1960s.
Telephone calls that could find their own way across a congested telephone network came with the introduction of digitally switched exchanges based upon the newly available transistors.
When data is streamed across today’s internet, it is divided into a series of packets and wrapped inside instructions that help it to perform the requisite switching. Each packet can then squeeze through internet traffic bottlenecks as bandwidth permits. Although it is really fast, internet traffic isn’t unlike urban road traffic – with queues, red lights, crossings, one-way streets and toll bridges to navigate. As a result, it is unlikely that packets will arrive in the same order in which they were sent, so each packet is marked with its proper place in the stream so that it can be reassembled on arrival.