Softphone

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A softphone is a software program for making telephone calls over the Internet using a general purpose computer rather than dedicated hardware. The softphone can be installed on a piece of equipment such as a desktop, mobile device, or other computer and allows the user to place and receive calls without requiring an actual telephone set. [1] Often, a softphone is designed to behave like a traditional telephone, sometimes appearing as an image of a handset, with a display panel and buttons with which the user can interact. A softphone is usually used with a headset connected to the sound card of the PC or with a USB phone. [2]

Contents

Applications

See Comparison of VoIP software

Communication protocols

To communicate, both end-points must support the same voice-over-IP protocol, and at least one common audio codec.

Many service providers use the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Skype, a popular service, uses proprietary protocols, and Google Talk leveraged the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). [3]

Some softphones also support the Inter-Asterisk eXchange protocol (IAX), a protocol supported by the open-source software application Asterisk.

Features

A typical softphone has all standard telephony features (DND, Mute, DTMF, Flash, Hold, Transfer etc.) and often additional features typical for online messaging, such as user presence indication, video, wide-band audio. Softphones provide a variety of audio codecs, a typical minimum set is G.711 and G.729.

Requirements

To make voice calls via the Internet, a user typically requires the following:

See also

Related Research Articles

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signaling protocol used for initiating, maintaining, and terminating real-time communication sessions that include voice, video and messaging applications. SIP is used for signaling and controlling multimedia communication sessions in applications of Internet telephony for voice and video calls, in private IP telephone systems, in instant messaging over Internet Protocol (IP) networks as well as mobile phone calling over LTE (VoLTE).

Telephony is the field of technology involving the development, application, and deployment of telecommunication services for the purpose of electronic transmission of voice, fax, or data, between distant parties. The history of telephony is intimately linked to the invention and development of the telephone.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet telephony, broadband telephony, and broadband phone service specifically refer to the provisioning of communications services over the Internet, rather than via the public switched telephone network (PSTN), also known as plain old telephone service (POTS).

Asterisk (PBX) PBX software

Asterisk is a software implementation of a private branch exchange (PBX). In conjunction with suitable telephony hardware interfaces and network applications, Asterisk is used to establish and control telephone calls between telecommunication endpoints, such as customary telephone sets, destinations on the public switched telephone network (PSTN), and devices or services on voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) networks. Its name comes from the asterisk (*) symbol for a signal used in dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) dialing.

VoIP spam or SPIT is unsolicited, automatically dialed telephone calls, typically using voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology.

VoIP phone Phone using one or more VoIP technologies

A VoIP phone or IP phone uses voice over IP technologies for placing and transmitting telephone calls over an IP network, such as the Internet. This is in contrast to a standard phone which uses the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN).

Gizmo5 was a voice over IP communications network and a proprietary freeware soft phone for that network. On November 12, 2009, Google announced that it had acquired Gizmo5. On March 4, 2011, Google announced that the service would be discontinued as of April 3, 2011.

VoIP User was a community-driven and financed SIP based VoIP network. The projects aim is to introduce people to the concept of VoIP by allowing members to experiment with SIP and IAX2 devices.

This is a comparison of voice over IP (VoIP) software used to conduct telephone-like voice conversations across Internet Protocol (IP) based networks. For residential markets, voice over IP phone service is often cheaper than traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) service and can remove geographic restrictions to telephone numbers, e.g., have a PSTN phone number in a New York area code ring in Tokyo.

Mobile VoIP or simply mVoIP is an extension of mobility to a voice over IP network. Two types of communication are generally supported: cordless telephones using DECT or PCS protocols for short range or campus communications where all base stations are linked into the same LAN, and wider area communications using 3G or 4G protocols.

Text over IP is a means of providing a real-time text (RTT) service that operates over IP-based networks. It complements Voice over IP (VoIP) and Video over IP.

Linphone

Linphone is a free voice over IP softphone, SIP client and service. It may be used for audio and video direct calls and calls through any VoIP softswitch or IP-PBX. Linphone also provides the possibility to exchange instant messages. It has a simple multilanguage interface based on Qt for GUI and can also be run as a console-mode application on Linux.

Wideband audio, also known as wideband voice or HD voice, is high definition voice quality for telephony audio, contrasted with standard digital telephony "toll quality". It extends the frequency range of audio signals transmitted over telephone lines, resulting in higher quality speech. The range of the human voice extends from 100 Hz to 17 kHz but traditional, voiceband or narrowband telephone calls limit audio frequencies to the range of 300 Hz to 3.4 kHz. Wideband audio relaxes the bandwidth limitation and transmits in the audio frequency range of 50 Hz to 7 kHz. In addition, some wideband codecs may use a higher audio bit depth of 16 bits to encode samples, also resulting in much better voice quality.

VaxTele SIP Server SDK is a complete development toolkit, which allows software vendors and Internet telephony service providers (ITSP) to develop SIP Server and (SIP) Session Initiation Protocol based VoIP systems for Microsoft Windows to install computer to computer voice chat, chat rooms, IVR systems, call center services, calling card services, dial/receive computer to PSTN and mobile phone calling services.

The 1100-series IP phones are 6 different desktop IP clients manufactured by Avaya for Unified communications which can operate on the SIP or UNIStim protocols. The SIP Firmware supports presence selection and notification along with secure instant messaging.

Federated VoIP is a form of packetized voice telephony that uses voice over IP between autonomous domains in the public Internet without the deployment of central virtual exchange points or switching centers for traffic routing. Federated VoIP uses decentralized addressing systems, such as ENUM, for location and identity information of participants and implements secure, trusted communications (TLS) for identify verification.

A VoIP gateway is a gateway device that uses Internet Protocols to transmit and receive voice communications (VoIP).

Acrobits is a privately owned software development company creating VoIP Clients for mobile platforms, based in Prague, Czech Republic.

Obihai Technology is a company that manufactures analog telephone adapters that support Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), XMPP, and Google Voice compatible Internet telephony.

References

  1. "Citation from article entitled - Softphone initiation". S594098268.online-home.ca. Retrieved 14 October 2017.
  2. "SoftPhone - Community Help Wiki". Help.ubuntu.com. Retrieved 14 October 2017.
  3. "Freetring - Free calls online". freetring.com. Retrieved 22 July 2021.