Got VoIP? Do you know? Do you care?
It’s been a while since I’ve really examined the topic of VoIP on this blog. And quite honestly, there’s a good reason for it. It’s just not that interesting of a topic anymore.
I remember when I used to look at the different service providers, comparing features, pricing, and whether they allowed you to bring your own analog telephone adapter. I played with Asterisk and set up my own PBX. And got into the nuts and bolts of IP telephones and ATAs. I set up some cool things several years ago.
But now? It’s just part of the fabric of my daily life. I don’t think about the fact that I’m using VoIP. It’s not even that novel anymore. It just works.Voice and Video. It’s not always a crystal clear connection, but it works pretty damn good most of the time.
Something else happened, too: the world became a lot more mobile. Mobile phone service, for a lot of people, has replaced land lines for two reasons: they’re cheaper and they are mobile.
Unfortunately, mobile networks aren’t quite geared for VoIP–yet. That will come, in time. Meanwhile the traditional voice connections work well enough and they’re finally cheap enough.
That isn’t to say VoIP is dead. Far from it. Businesses are using it for their internal phone systems–especially when employees are not necessarily in the same physical location. Sure is a lot easier when all the phones in your enterprise across various offices and home-offices are connected via IP to the same PBX.
Of course, you can set up all this yourself, as many do. Or you can outsource this to one of many providers that will manage it all for you. Quite honestly, that seems like the right approach unless you really like to do it yourself and learn the technology.
It’s very possible that, even if you still stick to your landline, that when you call someone, that call at least partially occurs over a VoIP link, with quality is so good, you wouldn’t even know it.
VoIP has really become plumbing, as one of my older friends was fond of saying (and probably would if I asked him). That means it’s not going anywhere anytime soon, but it’s just not that exciting to write about most.
At the end of the day, it’s a topic I am thankful I invested the time into many years ago. It does come up in my work from time-to-time, since I help come up with solutions to various customer scenarios at Check Point. It may be plumbing, but it’s also an application transiting a computer network that needs to be kept secure 
