Voip at Home,Voip Updated Howto,New Voip Phones,Voip Conferencing,
How this is possible, what systems are used, what is the standard...

http://freewebs.com/voipformula/

wrote in news:1148653162.162521.12300@
38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

what is the standard

http://www.skype.com/

Works great, even Florsheim mobile with the notebook in the mall with full
motion color video over bandwidth stolen from the various stores with no
security on their wifi connections!...(c;

The guy in China who called me on Skype was amazed at the stores in the
mall...(c;

Skype is free, unless you want voicemail and interconnections to worldwide
POTS telephones. You can call almost any phone, mobile or fixed, on Skype
from any place on the planet to any phone on the planet for a few cents a
minute. All you do is charge up your account from your credit card or
paypal.

Works great!....

I'll second the "works great" - even with video, if you have a webcam.
Of course, that's Skype-to-Skype, which is all over the web.

Skype has just announced, and I've implemented over my Softphone, a
Vonage software which makes my laptop show up as my phone number
anywhere I can get online - which I am here on the boat - that all US
and Canada Skype-Out (which is calling a regular telephone number) is
free for the rest of 2006.

I've done that because my Vonage Softphone, being a subscription
service, has a 500 minute limit of free calls. The landside version,
which you can backfeed into your home's POTS (Plain Old Telephone
Service) wiring and have all the outlets in the house live with that
signal, has two versions - one of 500 minutes, and the other unlimited
- calling all the US, PR, and 5 European countries free. It also gives
you a telephone number of your area code's choosing, as well as
additional ones, so that your kid in college can call you as a local
number.

And, I have my phone forwarded - up to 5 locations - on simultaneous
rings, to wherever I am. Thus, when I went to visit my Dad recently, I
had it forwarded there. When I go say goodbye to my sibs in a couple of
weeks, I'll have it forwarded to my sister's. And wherever in the
world we are, someone calls my home number (which I had ported over
from my POTS company), and it rings on the boat. Whichever of the
numbers (main or forwarded) picks up first gets the call.

Vonage, in both my landside and Softphone, has all the bells and
whistles of POTS - call waiting, call forwarding, three-way calling,
speed dial, voice mail, and so on. On the net, they show all the
activity of incoming, outgoing, and forwarding, as well as caller ID on
any available (anon is still anon) number. (On that subject, Skype
shows as 00000 in caller ID. Receivers of my calls show my number and
name, as I've chosen not to block it) So, as happened yesterday, when
I needed to have Lydia and my insurance agent on the line at the same
time, I just dialed them both and pushed the conference button (the way
Vonage handles three-way and call waiting on the softphone - on the
landside, it's the same flash to dial #2, and flash again to connect
the two). That's an advantage for someone calling me after I'm on with
another, and I want them to be together - I just push the conference
button, where on the POTS or landside services, I'd have to call them
back.

That's pretty cool for $15 a month, I think (or 25 for unlimited main -
the Softphone, not intended to be the primary service, is 15, but
limited to the 500 minutes).

Which brings me back to Skype. I'm using Skype for all my outgoing
calls because, stuck 600 miles away, I spend a lot of time on the phone
in our nightly calls with Lydia, and they don't add up to the extra
time on Vonage (Softphone, only 500 minutes). I'm also using it for
all the connections when I'm chasing parts for the boat.

However, I disconnect and turn off the service when I'm through. That's
because the principle behind Skype is distributed load - they use your
computer as a relay. In conversation with a tech (Skype has great tech
support, by the way - a real person, who responds very quickly, once
you have established an email link), however, I was assured that if my
signal is marginal, as it likely will be (getting back to
rec.boats.cruising topics) anywhere I get my signal on the water, that
AP's computer won't be tied up.

That's because Skype only uses totally stable, high bandwidth stations
for their relays. I'll let Larry describe how to find that your
computer is doing all that relaying - which is why I'm not currently
considering doing a fixed number with Skype, which they allow (for a
fee, as Larry described).

Moving on, you'll note that I have a gmail account. I love it. Up and
down email on any client you choose, or webmail, 2G storage, GREAT spam
filters, virus trappers, etc, and the ability to use Google as your
backup storage, along with their famous ability to do searches. Your
entire account is one single file; your various folders and
separations/highlights/whatever is handled by their search engine,
presenting only that info you ask for. Thus, you can also search your
entirety for something you've forgotten/misplaced, etc.

But, I digress. They also have googletalk - a VOIP peer-peer chat and
voice system. Those go straight through Google's server (not someone
else' computer snatched for the job), and as a result, is a fabulous
connection. I use it to talk to my children from the boat. Left in
the background, if they call, it rings like a telephone. Chat gives a
"boop" instead. Of course, like Skype, you both have to have the
service. And while there's a setting for dialup, I've not found the
voice to be very good - a bandwidth issue - over a dialup connection.

IMO, though I don't know how long it will take, the world will be on
VOIP for the most part in its telephony not too long from now. Already
the cents-a-mniute long distance services use that to make the calls
happen. It's why the cell phone numbers internationally are usually
differently priced; the only real cost in the phone calls is the
termination with a POTS end-point...

So, I recommend Skype (with the above reservations), GoogleTalk, and
Vonage wholeheartedly for your home or business and multiple telephones
(not physically tied to the computer as Skype and GoogleTalk), based on
personal experience.

There are other similar services out there, but so far as I'm aware,
Skype is the only one which will allow free calls to a telephone number
(currently only to the end of 2006, presumably to get you hooked and a
leg up on other means of talking).

It's an amazing world developing - and I'm very grateful for that,
particularly since Lydia's still umbilically attached to her kids...

L8R

Skip

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
http://tinyurl.com/p7rb4 - NOTE:new URL! The vessel as Tehamana, as we
bought her

"Believe me, my young friend, there is *nothing*-absolutely
nothing-half so
much worth doing as simply messing, messing-about-in-boats; messing
about in
boats-or *with* boats.
In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter,
that's
the charm of it.
Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your
destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never
get
anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in
particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to
do, and
you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not."

You are really gonna like Skype once you get down island. Skype-out is 2
cents/minute to the US vs. $2+/minute for the cheapest island rates. Also
much better sound than the coconut and string POTS you will encounter many
places. :-) Even for local calls it is a great deal. In the BVI Skype-out
is 12 cents. Even the locals pay a quarter on their land lines.

--
Glenn Ashmore

I'm building a 45' cutter in strip/composite. Watch my progress (or lack
there of) at: http://www.rutuonline.com
Shameless Commercial Division: http://www.spade-anchor-us.com

Glenn Ashmore wrote:
You are really gonna like Skype once you get down island. Skype-out is 2
cents/minute to the US vs. $2+/minute for the cheapest island rates. Also
much better sound than the coconut and string POTS you will encounter many
places. :-) Even for local calls it is a great deal. In the BVI Skype-out
is 12 cents. Even the locals pay a quarter on their land lines.

I use an unlocked GSM phone with a pre-paid SIM card. The rates from St.
Vincent and the Grenadines, St Kitts, Nevis, and Grenada is US$0.36/min,
Antigua is US$.56/min, Barbados is US$0.44/min days and US$0.26
weekends. I can call or receive calls from anywhere on the island or the
boat and don't have to fine an internet cafe or WiFi location. Not
$2.00/min. Check the Digicel web site.
http://www.digicelcaribbean.com/group/
krj
krj

Try it from the DR or BVI and see what you get billed. ;-)

--
Glenn Ashmore

I'm building a 45' cutter in strip/composite. Watch my progress (or lack
there of) at: http://www.rutuonline.com
Shameless Commercial Division: http://www.spade-anchor-us.com

"krj" wrote in message
.. .
Glenn Ashmore wrote:
You are really gonna like Skype once you get down island. Skype-out is 2
cents/minute to the US vs. $2+/minute for the cheapest island rates.
Also much better sound than the coconut and string POTS you will
encounter many places. :-) Even for local calls it is a great deal. In
the BVI Skype-out is 12 cents. Even the locals pay a quarter on their
land lines.

I use an unlocked GSM phone with a pre-paid SIM card. The rates from St.
Vincent and the Grenadines, St Kitts, Nevis, and Grenada is US$0.36/min,
Antigua is US$.56/min, Barbados is US$0.44/min days and US$0.26 weekends.
I can call or receive calls from anywhere on the island or the boat and
don't have to fine an internet cafe or WiFi location. Not $2.00/min. Check
the Digicel web site. http://www.digicelcaribbean.com/group/
krj
krj

Glenn Ashmore wrote:
Try it from the DR or BVI and see what you get billed. ;-)

Don't do DR and from the western BVI I can get the cell site on St.
Johns and use the cingular SIM card and the calls are the same as a
local call in the states. Other times I use winlink email.
krj

John Weston wrote in
:

You are correct that the voice is transmitted as "data" using
various and improving compression algorithms.
--
John



Matters not what data compression and transmission scheme is used. "Long
Distance" was to pay for all those wires interconnecting Syracuse to
Buffalo that could only handle X number of calls, simultaneously. Then the
carriers came to analog phones, increasing the numbers, but it was still on
the lines. Now it's on the fiber and the the calls are unlimited and "Long
Distance" is a SCAM....