What is VoIP?

VoIP, Voice over Internet Protocol, is an Internationally recognised standard for transmitting voice over the Internet Protocol, IP stack.

Traditional telephone voice data is sent over two copper cables, known as a copper pair. VoIP can be sent over any medium: fibre optic, copper, Ethernet (Ethernet to the exchange), satellite, cellular and Wi-Fi for LAN and WAN.

Why is VoIP useful?

VoIP is useful in small to medium business, institutions, educational environments, offices, headquarters, libraries and many more large environments.

Another feature of VoIP that is used to, but not exclusively to, some of the smaller business enabling login from home to the VoIP network, usually over a secure VPN connection.
This allows productivity to remain, whilst managers, directors or employees are unable to work where they would normally be located or wish to work from home.

What is a VoIP Server

A VoIP server is a piece of, generally racked, equipment that translates the data carried on tradition copper pair lines to data that can be carried over the TCP/IP stack within a LAN, CAN, MAN or Mesh network.

This piece of equipment is now being offered by a few ISPs, Internet Service Providers, but located within the local exchange or within an ISP operated (dedicated) data centre located close to a major Openreach/ISP exchange.

VoIP Potential

VoIP, in its many forms and names, has a lot of potential, especially when factoring in the rise of the IoT, Internet of Things.

Skype used to be the main player in VoIP for households, now the main player appears to be a tossup between Apple's FaceTime & Microsoft's Skype.

VoIP Research

I am interested in the features VoIP can deploy, but I would like to have more flexibility to add my own technology to the VoIP server.

As such, I am designing four VoIP server solutions.

• The first VoIP server will feature two copper connections
• The second VoIP server will feature eight copper connections
• The third VoIP server will feature two fibre optic connections
• The fourth VoIP server will feature eight fibre optic connections

The two copper connections will allow for two telephone data streams, typically installed in the home of a director, manager or accountable employees, enabling them to connect to the company's VPN and login to the VoIP server, whilst allowing their partner to be on another line and use any VoIP phone in the home.

The eight copper connections will allow for greater availability in an SMB office or regional branch of a national company or organisation, such as a bank, library, house or small call centre.

The two fibre optic connections will allow for the eventual transfer from copper connections to non-independent or independent fibre optic telephone data connections.

The two fibre optic connections will allow for the eventual transfer from copper connections to non-independent or independent fibre optic telephone data connections, whilst allowing for greater availability in an SMB office or regional branch of a national company or organisation, such as a bank, library, house or small call centre.

My Designs

Connection diagrams, case diagrams, interconnection to network diagrams are complete.

I am currently attempting to deciding whether to use a Linux distribution or to see if an Apple Mac OS X Server or Microsoft Server 2012 R2 OS would be appropriate for the installation of my own software to run the VoIP server.

Hardware will be based on the Intel Xeon Processor E5 v2 family, which includes quad-core server & workstations CPUs and increments in even core count up to 12 cores with the Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 @ 2.70 GHz.
Alternatively, the VoIP server can be specked with the Intel Xeon Processor E7 v2 family, which includes the 15 core 2.8 GHz Intel Xeon E7-8890 v2.

At the moment, this is just a research proposal, with designs, but to make this physically rewarding project would require working with Intel Corp. & Apple Inc.