Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP)

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) describes the transmission of IP packetized voice traffic over a communications infrastructure (for example, LAN and WAN).

VoIP is a category of hardware and software that enables people to use the Internet as the transmission medium for telephone calls by sending voice data in packets using IP rather than by traditional circuit transmissions of the PSTN.

One advantage of VoIP is that the telephone calls over the Internet do not incur a surcharge beyond what the user is paying for Internet access, much in the same way that the user doesn’t pay for sending individual emails over the Internet.