| |
IP Telephony (VoIP) |
Intercom over IP (IoIP) |
|
Original Intent |
Designed to provide telephony facilities over IP, stemming from the initial desire to cut international and long distance call charges. |
Using IP networks, Mercury takes VoIP "core" technology and adapts it to intercom style functionality.
|
|
Communication Mode Intended |
Business or personal communications. |
Strategic, tactical, mission critical communications with a high sense of urgency. |
|
Architecture |
Centralized and fixed. |
Distributed and mobile. |
|
Call initiation and negotiation |
Based on a telephony model - A number is dialed, the number is looked up, a route found, the call is negotiated, the call established, a bell or similar sounded, the call answered; and conversation commences.
|
Use of non-telephony call negotiation to speed up calls. There is a separate high level intercom application running on the PC that "knows" who can and can't communicate with each other. This instructs the low level audio and IP routing/mixing "engine" to send audio where required with minimal communication with the far end.
|
|
Conference Initiation |
Assuming the IP telephones of the desired parties are not in use, conferencing facilities are used to invite each member to join in by repeating call sequences a number of times. If the initiator of the call hangs up it usually terminates the conference. |
One touch to speak/listen to any other members of the IoIP enterprise in any combination desired. |
|
Prioritizing users |
N/A. |
Ability to limit place restrictions or grant privileges to users based on business rules including putting a priority on the voice transmissions of individual users or groups. |
|
Control over incoming audio |
User has a choice to place the call on hold or terminate the call. |
Personal mixing capability allows user to mix the incoming audio from up to 24 channels. What the user hears, in principle, is under the user’s control not someone else's.
|
|
Transmission |
Unicast - communication takes place between a single sender and a single receiver. |
Unicast or Multicast
Multicasting allows many recipients to receive the same audio source. Just one set of packets is transmitted for all the destinations which conserves bandwidth. |
|
Ability to control bandwidth usage on a global basis |
Usually limited to a few CODEC choices. |
Choice of 32 different CODECs (coding profiles). |
|
Latency |
Imperceptible |
Imperceptible |