VoIP Gateways

Each year, a growing number of enterprises and SMBs make the decision to part ways with their legacy phone service to adopt IP-based communication systems, which allow voice and data to travel over the same network.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems are becoming exceedingly popular because they offer a host of benefits, including reliability, flexibility and substantial cost savings compared to traditional phone service.

However, some companies have been reluctant to embrace this technology because the majority of VoIP gateways are not completely secure. Enterprises that deal with highly confidential information fear that transporting voice and data over an unencrypted public network can compromise the secure nature of their business.

Although standards have been established to address these concerns, including SRTP and SIP TLS, they have yet to mature to point that they are commercially viable. Fortunately, VoIP-over-VPN can compensate for what standard VoIP fails to provide.

VoIP gateways with VoIP-over-VPN provide enterprises and carriers with a straightforward, reliable and highly secure way to transmit voice through an IP connection, while at the same time achieving the cost savings and flexibility associated with traditional VoIP.

Voice-over-IP and Virtual-Private-Network technologies are able to offer highly secure encryption by converting the voice into data packets, routing them securely through a VPN tunnel and then converting the digital voice back into an analog signal on the other end.

For more information of how VoIP-over-VPN solutions can provide numerous benefits to an enterprise in need of secure communication infrastructure, check out this recent white paper authored by Patton Electronics, a leading provider of secure VoIP gateways and VoIP-over-VPN technologies.

Patton (News - Alert) Electronics manufactures SmartNode VoIP-over-VPN technologies that feature IPsec 256-bit encryption for voice and data, DES/3DES & AES strong encryption keys and Internet Key Exchange (IKE) for automatic, dynamic keying. These systems protect all inter-office voice and data communications that are transmitted over the Web.

"By encrypting both voice and data, VoIP-over-VPN technology unlocks the cost-savings of Voice-over-IP for security-conscious enterprises," reads the white paper. "By building voice encryption with IPsec and Internet Key Exchange (IKE) into SmartNode™ VoIP gatewayrouters, Patton makes cost-saving voice-and-data convergence a viable option for enterprises that handle even the most highly sensitive information."

Check out Patton Electronics' portfolio of solutions by clicking here.

Beecher Tuttle is a TMCnet contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Patrick Barnard