Press Release
June 30, 2005
"Switching to VoIP": A Hands-On Guide to Adopting Internet Telephony for IT Professionals
Sebastopol, CA--Among the rapid technological advances over the past
twenty-five years, one venerable system has remained virtually unchanged:
the global telephone network that's been in use for more than a century.
And now, even that is due to be replaced. Within the next ten years,
according to Jupiter Research, as many as two-thirds of the 230 million
landline telephones in the United States alone will be replaced by VoIP
(Voice over Internet Protocol), which makes phone service via the Internet
possible. A vast majority of systems management specialists plans to adopt
VoIP technologies within the next year.
"VoIP has sweeping implications for everybody who uses telephones, the
Internet, fax machines, email, and the Web," notes Ted Wallingford,
network architect and author of Switching to VoIP (O'Reilly, US $39.95).
"Hundreds of thousands of VoIP-based devices are in use in the United
States, and the next evolutionary step for the Internet is to become
reliable enough to replace the global telephone network as we know it."
VoIP is particularly appealing to business customers, especially those
with enterprise networks. With Switching to VoIP, Wallingford offers a
hands-on guide for IT managers, network engineers, and systems
administrators who are looking for practical ways to adapt a local- or
wide-area network infrastructure to replace existing enterprise telephone
networks, such as PBX systems. Migrating to a single network carrying
voice and data is easier and cheaper to scale and maintain, and allows for
more centralized administrative control. "If it's done right," he says,
"VoIP can transform the cost model of telecommunications by combining the
overhead of voice and data expertise."
There are potential pitfalls along the path to Voice over IP, he warns,
and already several high-profile implementation failures have occurred
among large enterprise adopters. "This may be why IP telephony has such an
intimidating reputation," Wallingford suggests. Switching to VoIP
addresses the most common reasons that VoIP migrations fail, and answers
questions about protocols and equipment that are not clouded by sales
pitches from IP vendors.
Wallingford ran head-on into that problem recently while designing an
ambitious, multi-site communications network upgrade for a large
construction contractor. "To prepare myself to lead that project, I sought
out good reference material," he explains. "Unfortunately, I was spoon-fed
sales pitch after sales pitch by the VoIP equipment vendors and their
salespeople--Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, Mitel, NEC, and so on. I was looking
for neutral, standards-respecting VoIP authority in book form, and I
couldn't find it. So I decided to write it myself."
His goal with Switching to VoIP is to prepare readers to deal more
confidently with vendors and implement the right VoIP solution the first
time. "Though this book presents a fair amount of theory, we've gone to
great lengths to keep the material as practical as possible," Wallingford
says. "It's been written so that you can read a chapter, apply that
chapter, and come back to learn more."
The book includes a brief introduction to traditional telecom systems,
compares their features and fundamentals to IP telephony systems, and
shows ways to integrate traditional telephony assets into an IP-based
voice network. Switching to VoIP also describes the standards involved
so readers can make educated choices about the large selection of
components and vendors needed to design and implement a converged IP data
and voice network with superior quality of service.
"The world of telephony is a multi-vendor domain in which interoperability
is critical and failure of competing systems to work together, unlike
desktop computing, is unacceptable," he insists. "This book advocates
standards, not brand names."
Additional Resources:
Chapter 14, "Traditional Apps on the Converged Network"
More information about the book, including table of contents, index,
author bio, and samples
A cover graphic in JPEG format
Switching to VoIP
Ted Wallingford
ISBN: 0-596-00868-6, 477 pages, $39.95 US, $55.95 CA
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938; 1-707-827-7000
About O'Reilly
O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.
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