Regardless of whether you are establishing VoIP telephony for your home or your business, the VoIP gateway is an essential element in making sure you are able to send and receive calls via IP as well as take advantage of the Internet. It is the job of the VoIP gateway to take the IP signals, translate them, and determine which point on the network should receive them. This is not an easy job but today’s technology allows the VoIP gateway to do it reliably and efficiently. If you are setting up VoIP communication for your home then you will see the terms VoIP gateway and VoIP router used interchangeably. This is the critical device that will allow you to have VoIP phone service and Internet at the same time. The VoIP gateway will direct the IP traffic so that the signals are sent to the proper place. There are many manufacturers of these products but Cisco is probably the largest and most recognizable. Many of their products are produced under the Linksys brand. With a VoIP gateway installed you will be able to use your traditional handsets. For larger applications such as businesses, the VoIP gateway does essentially the same thing that it does for home applications but the networks are larger and the VoIP gateway will be working to allow the business to use its existing PBX (private branch exchange) system. The job of the VoIP gateway is still to direct traffic by interpreting the headers in the data and sending it off to the proper point in the network. For business this may be more complex since the enterprise may have remote locations that are also handled by the VoIP gateway. Enterprise applications may also require that calls are routed to specific individuals on the network. For home systems, good quality VoIP gateways will start from $100 and up. For large scale applications, VoIP gateways are in the thousands. In both cases, users can enjoy significant cost savings as the monthly cost to use VoIP telephony is significantly less than that for traditional communications. We find VoIP gateways available in both analog and digital forms. They are most commonly purchased as an external unit but we do still find VoIP gateways available as PCI cards. The units themselves will have an Ethernet connection to access the IP network and connectors for the telephone lines and are designed to handle multiple protocols. While the current economic crisis has slowed growth in the VoIP gateway market somewhat, it is still a vibrant and healthy market. Asia, in particular, is still showing significant growth and manufacturers continue to invest a significant amount of capital in research and development. As much of the world speeds to adopt VoIP telephone communication, this growth will continue. Indeed, the market is a long way from seeing saturation.
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