Everything Voice Over IP

• 1973: Packet voice application created by Danny Cohen
• 1974: The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) publishes a paper entitled “A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection”.
• 1974: Network Voice Protocol (NVP) tested over ARPANET in August 1974, carrying 16k CVSD encoded voice.
• 1977: Danny Cohen and Jon Postel of the USC Information Sciences Institute, and Vint Cerf of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), agree to separate IP from TCP, and create UDP for carrying real-time traffic.
• 1981: IPv4 is laid out in RFC 791.
• 1985: The National Science Foundation requests the creation of NSFNET.
• 1986: Proposals from various standards organizations for Voice Over ATM, in addition to commercial packet voice products from companies such as StrataCom
• 1991: The first Voice-over-IP application, Speak Freely, is released into the public domain. It was originally created by John Walker. Additional development was done by Brian C. Wiles.
• 1992: The Frame Relay Forum creates standards for Voice Over Frame Relay.
• 1994: MTALK, a freeware VoIP application for Linux is released
• 1995: VocalTec starts providing the first commercial Internet phone software.
  • Intel, Microsoft and Radvision started working on standardization for VoIP communications system.
• 1996:
  • ITU-T begins creating standards for the transmission and signaling of voice communications over Internet Protocol networks with the H.323 standard.
  • US telecommunication companies petition the US Congress to ban Internet phone technology.
• 1997: Level 3 begins development of its first softswitch
• 1999:
  • The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) specification RFC 2543 is released.
  • Mark Spencer (Digium) creates the first open source private branch exchange (PBX) software (Asterisk).
• 2004: Commercial VoIP service providers become widespread.
• 2007: VoIP device manufacturers and sales gain significant traction in Asia
• 2011: WebRTC technology allows VoIP directly in web browsers

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), is a technology that allows you to make voice calls using a broadband Internet connection instead of a regular (or analog) phone line. Some VoIP services may only allow you to call other people using the same service, but others may allow you to call anyone who has a telephone number – including local, long distance, mobile, and international numbers. Also, while some VoIP services only work over your computer or a special VoIP phone, other services allow you to use a traditional phone connected to a VoIP adapter.