Voip Hacks

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is gaining a lot of attention these days, as more companies and individuals switch from standard telephone service to phone service via the Internet. The reason is simple: A single network to carry voice and data is easier to scale, maintain, and administer. As an added bonus, it's also cheaper, because VoIP is free of the endless government regulations and tariffs imposed upon phone companies.

VoIP is simply overflowing with hack potential, and VoIP Hacks is the practical guide from O'Reilly that presents these possibilities to you. It provides dozens of hands-on projects for building a VoIP network, showing you how to tweak and customize a multitude of exciting things to get the job done. Along the way, you'll also learn which standards and practices work best for your particular environment. Among the quick and clever solutions showcased in the book are those for:

• gauging VoIP readiness on an enterprise network
  
• using SIP, H.323, and other signaling specifications
  
• providing low-layer security in a VoIP environment
  
• employing IP hardphones, analog telephone adapters, and softPBX servers
  
• dealing with and avoiding the most common VoIP deployment mistakes

In reality, VoIP Hacks contains only a small subset of VoIP knowledge-enough to serve as an introduction to the world of VoIP and teach you how to use it to save money, be more productive, or just impress your friends. If you love to tinker and optimize, this is the one technology, and the one book, you must investigate.

About the Author
Born and raised in Detroit, MI, Ted Wallingford began working with information systems at the age of 7, when his father brought home a used Timex Sinclair 1000 computer and a notepad of hand-written BASIC programs from a garage sale. This little machine was the start of an eclectic career in the business of bits and bytes.

While working in the data center at ad agency J. Walter Thompson, Ted began to write articles for computer magazines. This led him into writing marketing materials for Gateway Computer and the former Amiga Inc., where he was also webmaster in 1999. As I.T. Director for a large, private construction firm, Ted transformed a single-operator midrange computer room into a mission-critical 24x7 data center hosting services for lines of business across the country. Ted has designed and implemented Voice over IP on networks large and small. He offers network design for VoIP systems and product management assistance for up and coming VoIP carriers through his macVoIP.comconsulting practice. Ted believes that VoIP and the internet are today's revolution in distance communication.

Aside from technology and writing, Ted has served as a member of the board of trustees for an international adoption agency in suburban Cleveland, where he lives with his wife and two children. Ted is currently a senior network engineer with LCG Technologies Corp. (http://www.lcgtech.com) in Elyria, Ohio, and is the author of O'Reilly Media's Switching to VoIP. Ted is currently working on his second O'Reilly book, VoIP Hacks.