Internet Traffic Study Points to Future of VoIP Peering

A new study shows that Internet traffic these days mostly bypasses the top transit providers. Instead, it travels through direct connections between traffic generators. The same thing will increasingly happen with VoIP traffic – that is, it will travel directly between VoIP providers without touching the PSTN (public switched telephone network). That will bring significant benefits for users.

The study is the project of the University of Michigan; Arbor Networks, a security and network management company; and Merit Network, a non-profit consortium that connects public universities in Michigan. The study looked at two years' traffic data from large communication companies including cable operators, international transit backbone operators, regional network operators and content providers.

It found that transit traffic had migrated from the 10 to 12 international transit providers that once dominated the business. Now, most traffic travels directly between traffic sources such as content providers, content delivery networks, consumer networks and data center operators. The study also found that about 30 Internet giants, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and YouTube, account for some 30 percent of traffic.

The reason for the trend is obvious: exchanging traffic directly lets the traffic generators avoid paying the transit companies for carrying their traffic. Likewise, VoIP providers that exchange traffic directly, or "peer," can avoid the payments to traditional telecom operators that are required when they send it over the PSTN. They may in fact avoid termination or call completion charges as well, since many VoIP providers deliver each other's calls to their own subscribers for free.

Peering can also help VoIP companies avoid quality degradation. Any call that moves between IP and traditional networks requires transcoding. That decreases the audio quality, even if the call ultimately ends up on the same type of network that it began on. End-to-end VoIP calls eliminate the need for such transcoding. The advantage is even greater when the calls involve more than plain-vanilla voice. For example, with some providers VoIP peering also allows the end-to-end transmission of HD voice calls, which have significantly better sound quality than even standard VoIP, not to mention traditional PSTN calls.

Peering also makes possible the addition of other features and capabilities to the voice calls themselves, including presence/availability detection, integration with instant messaging and video calling. Without end-to-end IP connections, the only thing that gets through is low-quality audio that makes it hard to differentiate between s and f sounds, and even harder to understand people with different accents.

Comments

[Andrew Beresford]

I absolutely believe this is the way it will go. Why pay the imcubant telephone companies huge sums of money for voice calls based on a legacy charging model (i.e. destination x duration x time of day) when IP (inc VoIP) is virtually zero cost?

However, at present many enterprises (in particular multinationals) still haven't realised the massive potential savings that are possible for intra-company and inter-company voice communications.

Plus they don't need to upgrade to expensive IP-based PBXs and IP-Phones to realise these savings!

Andrew Beresford
Global Voice Networking
www.voice-vpn.com

PS - Better to sell your imcubant telephone company shares sooner rather than later!!

[Andrew Beresford]

I absolutely believe this is the way it will go. Why pay the incumbent telephone companies huge sums of money for voice calls based on a legacy charging model (i.e. destination x duration x time of day) when IP (inc VoIP) is virtually zero cost?

However, at present many enterprises (in particular multinationals) still haven't realised the massive potential savings that are possible for intra-company and inter-company voice communications.

Plus they don't need to upgrade to expensive IP-based PBXs and IP-Phones to realise these savings!

Andrew Beresford
Global Voice Networking
www.voice-vpn.com

PS - Better to sell your incumbent telephone company shares sooner rather than later!!

[Increase Web Traffic]

Big fan of VoIP these days. Ditched my expensive phone for a couple different VoIP services that I'm currently trying out, and couldn't be happier. Surprised it took me so long to get around to it.

-Marc