Voice over Internet Protocol, commonly known as VoIP, is a technology used for the transmission of voice information using the Internet Protocol (IP). VoIP allows the sending of voice information in a digital form using packets as opposed to the traditional circuit-committed protocols of the Public Switched Telephone network (PSTN). Traditionally when one wishes to make a phone call, a call is placed using a telephone that is connected to a circuit-switched network.
In a circuit switched network, network resources are static; the network resources are allocated from the sender to the receiver before the start of the voice transmission. Two points are connected in both directions thus creating a "circuit". The resources remain dedicated to the circuit during the entire transfer and the entire voice transmission follows the same path, this is the foundation of the PSTN.
Up until circa 1960, every call had a dedicated wiring stretching from one end of the call to the other for the duration of the call. An example of this essential physical connection is a call from New York to Los Angeles required all the switches to connect pieces of copper wire between the two points for the entire duration of the call. Naturally this was expensive due to the resources in use.
Telephone conversations today are somewhat more efficient and cost a lot less. The voice transmission is digitized, and along with thousands of other phone calls can be combined onto a single fiber optic cable for much of the journey. Calls are transmitted at 64Kbps in each direction, totaling 128Kbps. There are 8 kilobits in a kilobyte; this translates to a 16KB transmission every second and a ten minute phone call consuming nearly 10 MB. (Tyson and Valdes, 2000)
Upon inspection of a typical phone conversation, much of the transmitted data is wasted. Only one party can talk at one time, which means that only half of the connection is in use at any given