Q&A: Voice Over IP (VoIP) and Video over IP (VoIP)?

Question by 235: Voice Over IP (VoIP) and Video over IP (VoIP)?
Technology has changed, new doors have opened, and it’s time to bring back ideas that where too early for their time. Not too long ago, there where several companies involved in Video Phone, it did no work, why? Because the communication lines where too slow (small bandwidth). Now, we have Cable, and DSL with very high speed available to most residents. VoIP has also improved significantly over those bandwidth, so why not go to the next step and add the video? There are already plenty of VoIP phones, a simple modification and adding a small screen (the same ones used for digital cameras) and a small camera (similar to the ones used in PC cameras) and synchronizing the image with the voice and sending it with the same packet of voice. Why can’t we go there? I would jump into that venture.

Best answer:

Answer by Byron M
There are already Video over IP services. Many VoIP carriers offer it as H.323 video protocols. I believe most of the issue is license codec and bandwidth but with open source systems such as Asterisk/TrixBox you can do Video over IP very well.

The protocol is device independent so if your input supports h.323 it should scale pretty well with whatever software/pbx solution you implement.

I have done very high bandwidth internal conference h.323 internally and compressed ISDN channels for satellite offices and it works great. There are software “reflectors” that can do it independently but as you stated a standardized PBX solution for internal business and branch office use is probably the best route to go.

What do you think? Answer below!