Voice over ip
 

Is it possible for me to use my headset/mic to make free phone calls to normal phones? If so, how?:dunce:

Re: Voice over ip
 

AFAIK, it's not readily available yet but BT and Yahoo recently signed a deal:
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20040312S0009

Check out something called Skype too, I know it does VOIP by using peer-to-peer technology.

Re: Voice over ip
 

my mate uses msn messenger somehow and can setup a voice call to my phone????

Re: Voice over ip
 

:confused: I did not know that it was possible !! Find out the details for us m8

Re: Voice over ip
 

True, but I don't think it'll be free.
In fact, I can't think of any way it'll be free unless you are a networking god and can hack your way around ISPs servers/phone lines to connect to a regular phone.

Re: Voice over ip
 

you certainly have to pay, but its veryyyyyyyy cheap.

He uses it to call home when travelling to the middle east, will try to find out more.

Re: Voice over ip
 

Currently VoIP quality is complete sh*t, not sure why .. it just is, dialpad used to be one of the best providers but it's impossible to hold a conversation with people and the calls are not that cheap anymore. However, if you want to hold high quality conversations between other PC users, try SkyPE, better quality than any phone, currently only works to other SkyPE users though.

Re: Voice over ip
 

Please do :Yes:Cheers, I will look into it

Re: Voice over ip
 

I don't know about Britain, but I know there are services that will allow me to make free calls in North America.

As for quality, I don't quite understand why Bifta says the quality is bad. I've been using Voip for a while now, and on dialup it was pretty bad. But these days on cable it is excellent. Better than a telephone actually.

Re: Voice over ip
 

VoIP is a bit pants over the internet and thats due to the way that the internet is run. Currently all forms of data, whether that be voice, video or normal data is handled the same way, and no one protocol or service is given priority over the other. This then means that the internet, or more specifically the path from the A Party to the B Party has to have enough bandwidth to handle all the traffic and quickly otherwise you will get excessive delay or dropped packets.

In order to ensure good transmission of voice, the internet would need to be QOS (quality of service) enabled in order to ensure that voice takes priority over everything else and thats not going to happen soon.

Sometimes you end up missing words or parts of words, usually because the information has been lost or more likely arrived too late. Think about it - if your talking to someone and a packet of "speech" gets sent via a different router it may arrive sooner or later than the preceding one, if its much later the packet is dropped and a gap in the speech is heard, otherwise you would hear words all mixed up and sentences in the wrong order.

Any delay above 150ms between the A and B party is noticeable too, which can cause long pauses between sentences and have people speaking over each other - and then theres echo...

Anyhoo, I'm boring you now... :D lets just say its going to be a while before speech on the net becomes viable.

Re: Voice over ip
 

I find the speech facility on MSN great, never really have problems with it other than my firewall doesn't like it :(

Re: Voice over ip
 

VoIP, whilst not having the reliability of normal circuit switched telphony, does offer a viable alternative for those in countries where international telephony rates are high (like in North Cyprus for example) and landlines bad. A normal landline here can take anything from 6 to 8 months to have put in and the rates to the UK are around 35p per min (peak) and nearly a £1 per min to the USA. Using a 2 way satelite BB connection and a service like Net2Phone I can place calls to the UK and USA for approx 3p per minute - which is quite a saving. Yes there is a 'delay' due to the sat connections latency, but this is no different to international calls used to be in the 70's and 80's when many were routed via satelite. More and more VoIP companies are appearing and some can offer an incomming UK or USA number so people can call you as well as you calling out.

Building in QoS protocols into TCP/IP is one way to ensure VoIP works better. It is however not the only way and it is the wrong way imo. The very essense of the power of the internet, the very reason it is the phenomenom it is today is because TCP/IP took the 'control element' out of the hands of those that own the physical network and placed it at the ends of the network, in the hands of the users. With TCP/IP you (your PC) control(s) your (virtual) connection from your machine to another. Thus you can define what service you can run. In a system where the control is placed with the owners of the physical infrastructure, they control what you can do with a connection, who you can connect to, how you can connect to them and crucialy how much you will pay for each of these control services. QoS is an 'excuse' used by those that own physical infrastructure to 'claw back' the control they lost with the widespread apdoption fo the internet.

So what is the alternative to QoS (built into the phyiscal network and under the control of the owners of the network and not the users)? The simple answer to thatis bandwidth. Just try running VoIP apps on an internal 100Mbs LAN in and office and then tell me the only way to get a decent voice call is to have QoS built into the network. VoIP works fine, without control / QoS features built into the network, provided there is enough bandwidth available. With the real cost of bandwidth falling at a rate faster than the rate at which processing power reduces, it makes more sense to 'throw bandwidth' at the problem than to spend time and money building expensive control and QoS solutions - that ultimately limit what the users of the network can do with the connection (unless they have the permission / cooperation and pay the netwrok owner). More sense that is if your objective is to produce as much value from the network for those that use it. If the objective is to produce as much revenue for those that own the network, and ignore those that use it, then having the control layer built into the network is an optimum solution. QoS is a great 'excuse' to roll back the gains (for users) that the internet has created so far and put the network owners literaly 'back in control'.

I do not want QoS. I want bandwidth. Then I can do what I like. VoIP. 2 way calling, 3 way calling any way calling , variable voice quality (bit rate) and a thousand other things besides, all only limited by my and other users imagination. Build QoS (and control) back into the network and you can have 3 way calling - if you pay the network owner to set it up for you. You can have better voice quality - if you pay the network owner to set it up for you. You can have anything that the network owner dreams up and can bill you for.

QoS - NO!
Bandwidth - YES!

:)

Re: Voice over ip
 

Hmm,
Yeah bandwidth is a "rich mans" solution, but you need to provice that bandwidth across the whole of the internet, and in 10 years when everyone is trying to send video calls accross the internet someone is going to have to pay for it.

You got deep pockets?

Rich man,
QoS - NO!
Bandwidth - YES!

Average Joe
QoS - Yes!
Bandwidth - How much!

Re: Voice over ip
 

Bandwidth - how much ?

This year x
next year 1/2 x
year after 1/4 x
year after 1/8 x

thats the reality of coat of bandwidth. We have seen the same example with other computing resources. People used to use 'sophisticated' techiques to save resources like computing power (coding in machine code), or storage space (like HD compression) - but with the price of these falling at moores law rate it's cheaper, simpler and more effective to 'throw resource' at them. With bandwidth though the issue of control is the real issue. Who will control what you can do with your connection. At the moment the end user has control (TCP=transmission CONTROL protocal). The current network owners would love to get that control back - and QoS is a great 'excuse' to do it. What you will end up with is a network that looks more like the mobile phone companies networks than the internet. Throwing bandwidth at the problem is not the expensive option - it's the cheap option !

Re: Voice over ip
 

Dialpad, a few years ago when I used it in Canada was excellent, if I use it here to dial anywhere the quality is terrible.

Re: Voice over ip
 

You see QOS as some sort of overlord of the internet, and its far from it. QOS works by assigning bandwidth where it is NEEDED, WHEN it is needed. Why have a huge bandwidth pipe which is only used to its potential when someone transmits Voice or Video over it. Its a waste.

Think of a broadband connection, say you have a 600k link, how much of the time is that maxed out? Very rarely for most people i would argue. QOS allows providers to assign bandwidth where it is needed at the TEMPORARY expense of non time critical applications.

Its not a permanent cap.

In addition to your argument about the cost of bandwidth, how much has the price of NTL's connections come down over the last couple of years?

Re: Voice over ip
 

Anyhoo, to get a little bit deeper for the doubters,
Another point to concider here is that QOS isnt just about bandwidth, its also about queing at ports. You want voice packets to get "out" before anything else, and that means at the expence of anything else as a late packet of voice is as good as a dropped packet, its useless. Voice is NOT retransmitted, data is. If you have a voice transmission going on accross a network, and a file transfer at the same time you need to ensure that the voice packets are transfered and processed by the routers before anything else so that processing delay is reduced and that its not help up by a large packet of data.

Oh and by the way TCP is not used for voice transmission UDP is.

Re: Voice over ip
 

I can only agree 50/50 on this one m8...

50% yep you are right. We need more bandwidth and a damb good worldwide infrastructure as soon everything is going to be piped by the net. Phone, tv, internet and even video phone. Without this infrastructure in place this is not going to happen !

50% I dont think that the solution just lies in throwing bandwidth at the problem. Software and hardware compresion does have an impotant role to play. Dont forget - we are going to have routers and other equiptment and they have to be able to handle the bandwidth. Its only sensible to minimise the ammount of data that we send no matter how big the pipe. If we dont we are going to get what happens on the U.K.'s motorways.... Gridlock.

IMHO for all this to hapen there needs to be an independant body that looks after it all and works with all the countries envolved. They allso need to be in charge of security. The problem with a global infrastructure is that it makes an idea way of people attcking other people and this will happen. Perhaps a new tcp suite desighned for the job is the way to....

Its a bright future but if we rush in we could be talking about a worldwide crash of everthing. How much would it cost if this system was brough down... Billions and billions !!!! The electronic and of the world... Sounds far fetched but no ever thought code red would ever happen !

Thought planning and investment are the keywords - lets walk before we start to run......

* that was a party political broadcast brought to you by the stuartbe party * :D

Re: Voice over ip
 

No I see QoS as having the potential to allow the gains (for users), of having the control layer removed from the internet infrastructure (what TCP/IP does) to be reversed - at the expense of users of the network and to the benefit of the owners of the network. It is based on a false premise that bandwidth is scarce - a false premise it is in the interests of the network owners tomaintain as long as they can get away with it.

Why have a huge pipe? - Because when it costs billions to dig up the road to lay the pipe and yet costs the same to put in 'unlimited' capacity as it does to put in 'tiny capacity' it is a waste to not put in 'unlimited' capacity. Which is exactly why over 90% of all the fiber already in the ground in the UK is simply UNUSED at the moment.

You have said it yourself. QoS will allow the PROVIDER to assign bandwidth. That is the problem with QoS. If the internet from day one had allowed for the network owner and not the user to control what the connection could be used for, then we would not have a whole raft of applications. We would certainly not have online gaming like we do now (no network owner would allow such frivolous wastage of it's 'precious' resource). Email would be an anethma - as it would eat into 'fax' profits. Even when it was relesased by the network owner it would only work on thier network and require a 'roaming' deal with other operators to pass it between themselves, all with appropriate charges. VoIP - forget it. P2P - hah! Just look at the mobile networks to get an idea how a controled internet might look.

[/QUOTE]

I can not help it if NTL decided to build the 'wrong' kind of network and now want us to pay for it. The cost of bandwidth IS falling year on year and faster than processor prices are falling and has done so steadily and consistently for the last 20-30 years. It is certainly a valid question as to why these benefits have not been passed onto the end users, and one I am constanly asking myself.

Imaginr you have a coroporate LAN. It's current shared capacity is 1Mbs. You want to be able to have good quality voice and video links over this network. Do you

a) Spend loads of time money and resources (say amount X) on building in sophistciated network level controls, in hardware and sw that allow a 'central controller' to decide who and what should have priority and allow them to 'slice up' this limited bandwidth on an as and when basis (so that when the MD wants to talk / video then eveything else is put on hold).

or

b) Spend 1/2 X upgrading the network to a dumb, uncontrolled 100Mbs (or even gig ethernet) network - and just let the users get on with it.

Both soloutions allow decent quality voice and video. If your objective is to 'serve' the user of the network then option b is the best. If your objective is to control the users then option a has its merits.

Re: Voice over ip
 

Compression is not a problem, because it can be implemented under the control of the users of the network and does not require the 'permission' of the network owner.

If the amount of traffic that the roads could carry doubled every year, for the same cost of maintaining them, then gridlock would not exists. I know this stuff is counter intutive. We simply have never had 'unlimited' resources before the 'digital age'. When the resource moves towards unlimited at near zero cost the only sensible thing to do id to waste it!

Re: Voice over ip
 

I have been using skype for a few months now. Its very good no breaks except if the other person talks while you are...

It is extremely good and they are clear when you listen. easy to set up.

Re: Voice over ip
 

I'm dumping my phone line soon. I'm getting Vonage. Check it out: http://www.vonage.com.

Re: Voice over ip
 

About as much use as a chocolate fireguard for us Europeans.

Re: Voice over ip
 

It will probably expand to Europe. Anyways, there's bound to start a company in Europe that offers the same service.

Re: Voice over ip
 

I currently use Skype...... The quality is superb. The confrence function is excellent also.


http://www.skype.com/

Re: Voice over ip
 

OK, having failed to get hold of my friend I took the dangerous step of clicking the menu myself :)

in messenger, it's 'Actions'|'Make a Phone Call'

simple really. You do need to have signed up with a voice service providor though.

They work on a prepay basis but are extremely cheap.

Re: Voice over ip
 

skype now has a dial facility (windows only :( ), that seems pretty reliable :)

Re: Voice over ip
 

I currently use pipecall from pipemedia, it costs 2.9 a month comes with a 0845 number, I use my stereo speakers and a pc mic to make and receive callls.. The service is such good quality I have dropped my landlien. Admittedly you can tell your voice has been heavilly encoded, but for a noraml telephone conversation its great, and the fact my voicemails and faxes goto my email address, thus following me around is great.. VoIP is really becoming a reality now! id say givie it a go, you only sign up for one month at a time so give it a trial.. www.pipemedia.com

ps the software i use is the x-ten soft phone. but you can buy a SIP ready handset for £60

oh the only thing to remeber if your uploading files on bit torrent or to a server, you might gfet some delays in your voice call.. (need QoS)...