Members of the NREN community requested TERENA to start an investigation into IP telephony in September 2001. The response was very positive and suggestions were made to coordinate the creation of a cookbook with recommendations for setting up IP telephony solutions at university and national level and information about protocols and interoperability of equipment, as well as integration with the existing international hierarchies for IP videoconferencing. For this reason, a number of people in the TERENA community with significant expertise in the area of IP telephony decided to undertake this task and to compose this document hereinafter referred to as the IP telephony Cookbook.