Internet telephony: going like crazy

Interet telephony is possibly the fastest-growing part of communications today. This article discusses what exactly it is, who needs it, and how it works. Internet telephony, or voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), is the provision of phone service over the Internet. But in sharp contrast with conventional telephony, it carries voice traffic as data packets over a packet-switched data network instead of as a synchronous stream of binary data over a circuit-switched, time-division multiplexed (TDM) voice network. There are some substantial benefits (as well as some sticky problems) to the scheme, which is why companies and individuals are finding it increasingly attractive