A voice over internet protocol phone is a desk phone that is specifically designed to use the internet as a bridge to the public telephone network and allows free calls to any other phone located on the same network.
Most VOIP phones receive their power and connect to the local network via the same Ethernet cable, this is also known as power over Ethernet or POE. VOIP phones can either be connected directly to a switch or router, or they can connect to a computer which then passes network data to the phone, however if the computer fails then the phone will lose connectivity too.
Modern VOIP phones have a selection of advanced features such as conferencing, call logs, forwarding, web connectivity and integration with internal communication systems.
