A multiplexing scheme for H.323 voice-over-IP applications

Voice communications such as telephony are delay sensitive. Existing voice-over-IP (VoIP) applications transmit voice data in packets of very small size to minimize packetization delay, causing very inefficient use of network bandwidth. This paper proposes a multiplexing scheme for improving the bandwidth efficiency of existing VoIP applications. By installing a multiplexer in an H.323 proxy, voice packets from multiple sources are combined into one IP packet for transmission. A demultiplexer at the receiver-end proxy restores the original voice packets before delivering them to the end-user applications. Results show that the multiplexing scheme can increase bandwidth efficiency by as much as 300%. The multiplexing scheme is fully compatible with existing H.323-compliant VoIP applications and can be readily deployed.