I remember the days when i was surfing. I would be day-dreaming on my surfboard and waiting for a good wave to come along. Then suddenly everything would start to change around and when I'd look out to sea, a monster wave would be heading for me and the first thought was, "Wow! This baby's so huge, if i start paddling now, i might just ride it".

INTERNET TELEPHONING IS THE NEXT HUGE WAVE HEADING OUR WAY.

What is surprising is that most people can't even see it coming.

I think some of this is because of all the nuisance telephone marketing that has gone on in recent years by all the traditional phone companies. They have confused us all with so many rates and plans that we just don't want to be bothered anymore.

But! Internet telephoning is a completely different thing.

Ok, let me explain a little more:

PSTN

The traditional telephone network is referred to as pstn, which stands for public switched telephone network. You telephone your friend and your phone is switched through the pstn to your friend's phone. Basically, all the time you are talking to your friend, no-one else can use the circuit that you are using.

INTERNET

Then along came the internet and the phone companies were quick to see that they could use it for their overseas calls and they have been making massive profits for recent years using it. This is because the internet can use the same set of wires to send hundreds of phone calls. When you were talking to your friend on PSTN, the telephone line was dedicated to your use even when you weren't saying anything and there was no way for it to speed up how fast your words would go through the wires.

On the other hand, the internet transfers little packets of information and each packet has its own address on it like the post office system for sending letters around the world.

The internet can send millions of packets together and re-route them to their final address.

When you type an address for the internet you might have noticed that it starts with http://www.......

Http:// stands for hyper text transfer protocol which is just the set of rules that your message packet complies with. The rest says that the message is to go through the world wide web to a specific address.

MESSENGERS

If your computer is connected to the World Wide Web, and especially if it has a high speed packet delivery service (broadband), then it suddenly becomes possible for you to use a microphone and speakers to communicate with anyone else who is using the same messenger program. Excuse me yelling but i can't say it loader: for free!!!!!!!

The set of rules that the messenger programs use for this new wave of telephoning through the internet is voice over internet protocol (VOIP). Unfortunately, most people still think VOIP is a brand of Russian vodka so it is safer to refer to it as internet telephoning.

However, internet telephoning is a lot more than using a messenger program.

 
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SKYPE is one of the Messenger programs that took the next step and connected the Internet Messaging system to the Private Telephone Network. Now, with “SkypeOut”, you can call from your friend’s home phone from your computer for about 3.5cents a minute.

“Uh Oh, why can’t I just use my home phone and send and receive calls on it.”

Yes, yes, yes, you can and still make cheap phone calls with the Internet.

ENGIN means very serious savings on your phone bill. For example, at the moment, you can call any home phone in Australia, for as long as you like for 10 cents or phone people in some other parts of the world for 20 cents for as long as you like.

I personally believe ENGIN is the best system right now.

 

 

INTERNET TELEPHONING (VOIP): WHAT IS IT?