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VoIP Hacks

Tips and Tools for Internet Telephony

By Ted Wallingford
Edited by David Brickner
Published by and (C) O'Reilly Media

Read an excerpt from VoIP Hacks.
View the Table of Contents for VoIP Hacks.

Publisher's Description of 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.

Critical Praise for VoIP Hacks

If you enjoy learning about VoIP and you want to learn how to do more with it, this book is for you. Going beyond the regular setup "tricks", VoIP lists out plenty of fun and interesting things to do with your VoIP connection. Whether it's downloading little applications to track your usage or learning how to control the lights in your home with your IP phone, this book will please all the geeks out there in the world who need to go past simply using their connection, needing to get into the guts of how it all works. If you want to learn more about VoIP and some of the fun things you can do with it, this is a fun book to add to your collection.
--Daniel McKinnon, via amazon.com

(C) 2003 - 2006 Ted Wallingford