I was wondering if anybody had any experience with internet telephony or voIP. I've tried Skype with mixed results, and recently read an article about a number of fairly large companies who have adopted it as a money saving venture.

In the UK BT announced yesterday a new phone service whereby when you take your phone outside your home it uses the Vodafone network, and when you use it at home it automatically uses voIP over bradband. Sounds interesting...

So far I have only tried skype and it was OK. However I'm still on dial-up and it is not recommended for 56kbps. If I tried to use computer to computer call, there were problems in communication.
But it works great at long distance calls to stationary phone numbers, and much cheaper...

I still have to try this voip, I have heard a lot about it's functionality, but never had the time to try it.

I have used Skype and the MSN Messenger voice conversation thingy. They have both worked extremely well, although I had a few problems getting my firewall to allow voice convos in MSN, although it detected and accepted Skype straight away. MSN also seems to have a 1 second delay in the conversation, which can be a little bit annoying.

Skype is a revolutionary Internet Telephony that is free. It is free to the sacrifices of the following:

1) You can not call out to ordinary land-line phones without a cost.
2) No voicemails without a cost
3) No Message Box without a cost.

I have tried skype, and I believe the sound quality all depends on your internet speed.

Since the Internet (DSL, 56k) travels over copper cables, it is a lossy soultion. In other words, if you talk to your neighbor it will sound crystal clear... but the longer that "data" you sent over the copper cables has to travel further, then the more lossy it will get.

A perfect analogy of this is the boy-scout game: Pass it on.

One person will recieve the message directly... but the more and more it gets passed on, over distance, the message will begin to distort itself.

However, a new kind internet has revolutionsied the way we talk with VOIP. Fiber Optics.

Fiber Optics is a thick cable that can span very far. But unlike the ordinary copper cables, it's interior is glass.

When light travels directly head-on with glass, it can travel great distance and at the speed of light.

When you click "http://trap17.com" on your web browser, you are sending permission to access a page. That permission has to get to the "Trap17.com" webserver. If the permission were to be mailed, it will be super slow. If it were to be transfered at the speed of sound, it will still be slow. The speed of light is needed. Hence, All data is transfered at the speed of light, through your copper wired DSL, 56k, etc.

Cable has adopted to the Fiber Optics standard.

Although the Speed of Sound may sound fast, it is not. Given that is travels oh some 500mphs, it will take about four hours to travel a single string of information from california to new york, or vice versa.

The speed of light has made that possible -- instantly..

All in all it depends solely on your internet connection. For best results adapt to Fiber Optics which is cheaper than your ordinary Copper Wire for twice the speed. However, it is not widely available as the Copper Wire technology.

I have been using skype for a while now and am absolutely loving it. I find that it works perfectly and have chatted for hours on end to many of my friends abroad. It especially works well if both parties are using broadband internet connections, although I have used dial-up with broadband before and it was fine on the dialup side but had a slight echo on the broadband site. Voice over IP is definately the way of the future.

yeah im using skype and calling with in almost every day, it is really good and totally FREE. and you can use it with 56k dialup network connection. so i recommend to use it.

I had used many types of internet telephony including voice chatting over the net, Net2phone, an IP phone, and a VoIP softphone.
In Lebanon it is preferable to use Internet telephony because it very cost effective where you can call the US for $0.04 a minute compared with about $0.67 a minute on our land line.
-Voice chatting such as MSN is a little unreliable because of the weak internet connection here in Lebanon (dialup 33.6 Kbs) where the quality of the voice at my end is extremely low but this may be different in other countries. The best of all is that most voice chatting services are completely free of charge.
-Net2Phone can be considered as a reliable choice where the voice quality is relatively good but this quality will dramatically decrease if the connection is stressed. It is somehow expensive to call to the Middle East using this service and because in Lebanon we pay extra money (about 20%) over the price of every unit.
-The VoIP is a good choice but this depends on the provider: some providers provide you with extremely good services but others (especially free ones) will give you a very bad connection. So it’s up to you to judge your provider. Some people use a softphone software) because they are cheap and some are for free, others use (including me) use an IP phone which is a separate piece of hardware that independently connect to the internet and reach its server. I am currently using an IP phone, it is portable and you don’t need a PC to access the service, and the voice quality is very good as if you are talking on the normal line. Any ways, some rare failures are to be expected.

I have been using VOIP for quite some time now. It has been working quite well.

I went with VOIP for the simple reason of low cost long distance.

The service itself costs me $19.95 a month, but I get unlimited local and long distance calls withing the United States and Canada. The company I use also has International plans for $49.95.

This has saved me a fortue in Long Distance calls.

Plus side of VOIP. - Low cost, free long distance, ability to use any standard telephone, ability to call to any standard land line telephone, ability to take your phone and phone num,ber anywhere that you go (as long as you have a good internet connection) , cutting edge technology which keeps improving over time, free features like call waiting, caller ID, voice mail, and so on.

Down Side of VOIP - Still a few glitches (Occasionally get a lag in conversation) , Enhanced 911 services do not work (Regular 911 services do work), VOIP relies on a clean path through the Internet (We all know that occasionally routers go down and force internet trafick to take a longer route) , MUST have a broadband connection.

The last point can not be stressed enough. A VOIP connection requires 56K of bandwidth both up and down. This is dedicated bandwidth, so dial-up connection just is not capable of handling it.

I have a 3MB connection, so I have no trouble.

You also can't use a "Peer to Peer" filesharing program while using the VOIP... Filesharing programs do wierd things to your bandwidth and cause what they call "Jitter" on you VOIP phone service. Meaning that you get broken conversations, and momentary drop-outs.

All in all though... VOIP is very good. Still needs a little improvement, but that will come in time. VOIP technology is advancing in leaps and bounds very quickly. It will only get better over time.

But don't give up your Standard Telephone line quite yet.

I work on a Telco and we are studying VoIP to regular users, not on computers.
It's a great technology and in fact anyone says it's the future on voice telecommunications. I share that.

There are great products to make a PBX or Softswitch like Asterisk or Vovida.
This topic was treated in this forum following these links:

* Voip(voice Over Internet Protocol)

*Sprint Voip

*Voip

*Voip

and

*Voice Over Ip

Finally, great technology!!