[BNM] voip - that's posh skype innit?

[Dave Phelan]

On 2/1/07, Kath Burke <kath at kathburke.com> wrote:
> Sorry for the feeble question... voip – yes that's using the broadband for
> your phoneline... so...
>
> I asked an IT bloke about voip last year and he seemed to think it was only
> suitable for businesses with a few staff ... whereas I'm working alone. How
> much better are these services than Skype (which is crackly as hell for me)?

Skype isn't VoIP. It is voice over the internet protocol, but uses a
peer-to-peer model. Pretty well, every time I've used it, so your
crackles might possibly be more to do with the audio gear on your
system?

VoIP is a set of standards for phone calls over the internet protocol,
including SIP and H323, as well as much more. With the right VoIP bita
and pieces, you can get call quality as good as GSM, or call quality
as good as a landline phone, depnding in things like the codec used,
the availability of reserved bandwidth (Quality of Service) and such.

> How good a broadband connection do you need and will I sound like I'm
> calling from down a well in Cambodia or something?

That depends.
A normal landline voice call without any compression used to fit into
64kbps of dedicated bandwidth. If you can *guarantee* that much
bandwidth per call  (QoS), and a round-trip latency of less than
150ms, you'll could have a VoIP call as good as a landline. But you
won't get QoS on a broadband line, nor across the global internet.

> Can anyone explain this in simple terms for me (I'm a web MARKETING person
> you see – I don't actually understand this IT stuff, I just pretend I do).

That simple enough?
Dave Ph
-- 
 Dave Phelan CCIE#3590   ICQ: 50180416    GSM: +44 (0)7776 168561
 dave.phelan at gmail.com                  http://www.davephelan.org
 "I think rock 'n' roll and science fiction were in a
 very real sense all the culture I had."    -- William Gibson.