Eric De Vito wrote: >Excuse-me first for my question, maybe it's stupid, but I am new in these >technologies. >So, what is the difference between VoIP phone technology and the phone services >offered by internet providers which use internet to flow voice data ? >Thank you > >Eric >_______________________________________________ >GnomeMeeting-list mailing list >[email protected] >http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnomemeeting-list > > Hi,
I would say that nearly everything that transfers voice calls over the Internet is related to VoIP. There are different technologies (i.e. protocols) that can be used for this. There are standardized protocols, like sip, h323 and closed protocols (skype), Depending on which software or hardware you use, you will be using one of these technologies. The Internet providers, at least here in Germany, offer there VoIP services via sip. There are many softphones (programs that use your computers sound card and Internet connection, like Ekiga) available that use sip as there communication protocol. There are also hardware phones and adapters for analog phones which can be plugged directly to your local network (Ethernet), which use sip to make the calls. As I mentioned before, there are other protocols to make VoIP calls. H323 is used be MS-Netmeeting, MS-Messenger and the old GnomeMeeting. Skype and, as far as I know, Yahoo and others use a private unpublished protocol to communicate and can't communicate with other devices that doesn't speak to them. There are many cheap "hardware phones" that say that can speak to nearly any client using VoIP, but be careful, because there are just USB-devices that need to have your computer to make the calls. Regards Andreas _______________________________________________ GnomeMeeting-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnomemeeting-list
