Free VoIP Calls

 I am sure you have heard the adage, "There’s no such thing as a free lunch". Well, obviously the person famous for that saying hadn’t yet heard of VoIP. VoIP is Voice over Internet Protocol- or in simple terms, the ability to transmit voice over the Internet.

VoIP has been gaining in strength and popularity as a telecommunications of choice. Many small businesses are opting to go VoIP. It is a viable source for businesses to make long distance calls virtually free, or at a significantly lower cost when compared to other telephone service providers.

With a High Speed Internet connection, you too can experience the power of VoIP. In fact, you may have already tried this technology without even realizing it. There are many services and programs that have been available for free, on the Internet, for the past ten years that have embraced VoIP.

Dialpad was known for allowing people to connect a microphone and speakers to their computers and then make long distance calls virtually world wide for free. Well, Dialpad isn’t free any more, but if you do purchase their monthly service, they do provide an option for unlimited long distance calling. This service is still comparable to other telephone providers.

Currently most of the free VoIP have begun to charge a monthly fee for their services. There is still one program left that is absolutely free. That is Ad Calls. This program displays various advertisements on their display while you can use the service to make free calls. There are limitations to this program however. You can only use the service for ten minutes at a time, and you are unable to call toll free numbers.

The major VoIP programs that embrace free calling left on the Internet are bundled with your Instant Messaging programs. Programs such as Yahoo Messenger have recently been redesigned with the ability to make free voice phone calls using VoIP. You won’t be able to call a landline telephone however. You will need to use the program to call another member who is using the same program. For example, if you have the newly VoIP enabled Yahoo Messenger downloaded to your computer, yet your buddy (who lives across the world) is using the old Yahoo Messenger, you can send them a link to download and upgrade their current version. Once they have installed the new Yahoo Messenger, you will see a "call" button with a phone icon at the top of your Yahoo Messenger chat box. By clicking call, you will be using VoIP technology to send a phone call to your buddy’s computer. The receiving computer will actually ring, like a standard telephone, and your buddy will have the option of accepting or declining the phone call. All that is needed is a high speed Internet connection, this provides the best audio quality and speed), a microphone, and speakers. You and your buddy are free to talk as long as you like. The other advantage to Instant Messengers that allow free VoIP calls is the ability to call more than one person. You can call people on your buddy list, and invite them for a conference call. This has unlimited potential and can be used by small businesses for free training calls, and by people everywhere who just want to stay in touch with friends and family.

Other Internet Messaging services that have embraced VoIP calling include MSN messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, and Google has begun their new service, Google Talk.

VoIP is a preferred method of telecommunications due to the fact that you can integrate audio, video, and web based applications with one program. The Instant Messaging programs are perfect examples of how audio and web based communications are working together to increase communication. Also included with many Instant Messaging programs is the ability to hook up a digital camera or web cam and incorporate video with your audio and web based application.

VoIP Telephones are also beginning to incorporate video with their VoIP services. This will be a very popular trend in the future. As there are over 900 million Instant Messaging subscribers, people are already experiencing the power and freedom of converged communications.

Cellular phones are realizing that people want to combine video with their audio, and many videophones are being released. Some phones have gone the next level and have combined audio, video, and graphics by allowing you to store pictures in your telephone, and use it as a camera.

As the technology of VoIP continues to advance, we can rest assured that more "Beta" programs will be released and as that occurs, keep your eye out for more free VoIP programs.

posted by chanlee at 1:59 AM 1 comments
Can Network Infrastructure Cope VOIP Adoption?
VoIP technology is more efficient by combining data and voice transmissions into one system that is connected to the Internet. VoIP service is currently free from most, if not all, state and federal taxes and tariffs that are typically imposed on POTS (plain old telephone service) providers.

This means that VoIP service is anywhere from 10 percent to 30 percent less expensive than traditional POTS service.

But the underline fact is that the VoIP infrastructure must be strong enough to support the seamless movement of data packets.

With the POTS, data transmission via facsimile is unidirectional rather than bidirectional or multidirectional. This means that, while someone is sending, the other side is locked up and cannot transmit, resulting in slower data transmission or no transmission, since data re-routing is not automatically available as in the Internet context. Voice transmissions through POTS are bidirectional, but the routing of the traditional telephone call is static or fixed, preventing automatic rerouting if a particular pathway is blocked. Moreover, POTS does not allow for simultaneous transfer of data with voice transmission.

As with any new telecommunications technology, government regulation always becomes a question, especially when the telecommunications technology involves the Internet. Indeed, the courts, Congress, the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are still hashing out jurisdictional issues in the regulation of VoIP.

As a practical matter, VoIP technology continues to develop rapidly. For instance, the development of the Internet has long contained a promise of video phones being available. With the implementation of VoIP technology, video telephone calls are now a reality within the grasp of businesses and consumers alike. Video phone units that require broadband access and constitute a form of VoIP are available from $ 269 per unit to as much as $ 599 a unit, depending on the features and specifications of the particular user. The only drawback with these systems, at the moment, is that the units work only with each other and one brand’s phones are not yet designed to integrate with another brand of video phone. So at least in the short-term, businesses are required to buy multiple units for branch offices, or individual consumers are required to buy sufficient units for family members, who are spread out among vast distances.

Another recent development concerns the adapter technology for linking or connecting a telephone device to a computer device for sending and receiving VoIP. Two leaders in home networking equipment, Netgear and Linksys (a division of Cisco Systems), recently announced plans to build phone jacks into wired and wireless equipment. The jacks are designed to provide an instant link to the commercial VoIP network developed by Vonage. Furthermore, there are additional products from these companies that allow home system broadband routers to work with the VoIP phone jacks so that multiple computers within the home can participate and enjoy VoIP phone calls with a wireless configuration. Thus, one broadband connection can be shared by all PCs within a household for VoIP usage.

On the negative side, the advent of VoIP technology also means introducing new risks to the user. These risks include the interception of VoIP communications through industrial espionage or the theft of trade secrets transmitted over VoIP. Indeed, as companies seek to implement VoIP as part of wireless networks, the threat to interception by third parties other than law enforcement is very real. Developing proper network security protocols and a strong infrastructure network is a constant problem given the plethora of circumvention efforts by programming experts.

Audible spam over VoIP presents another problem. Because VoIP systems are grounded in the TCP/IP protocol of the Internet, the ability to design software programs that make multiple phone calls with pre-programmed announcements and unsolicited sales offers already looms on the horizon and threatens to be as ubiquitous and pervasive as visual SPAM on a computer screen. The development of VoIP SPAM filters and other related software protection products will no doubt follow. VoIP also creates an opportunity for designers of viruses to infect computer systems. Therefore, antivirus software will have to address this threat.

Voip Calls

I am sure you have heard the adage, "There’s no such thing as a free lunch". Well, obviously the person famous for that saying hadn’t yet heard of VoIP. VoIP is Voice over Internet Protocol- or in simple terms, the ability to transmit voice over the Internet.

VoIP has been gaining in strength and popularity as a telecommunications of choice. Many small businesses are opting to go VoIP. It is a viable source for businesses to make long distance calls virtually free, or at a significantly lower cost when compared to other telephone service providers.

With a High Speed Internet connection, you too can experience the power of VoIP. In fact, you may have already tried this technology without even realizing it. There are many services and programs that have been available for free, on the Internet, for the past ten years that have embraced VoIP.

Dialpad was known for allowing people to connect a microphone and speakers to their computers and then make long distance calls virtually world wide for free. Well, Dialpad isn’t free any more, but if you do purchase their monthly service, they do provide an option for unlimited long distance calling. This service is still comparable to other telephone providers.

Currently most of the free VoIP have begun to charge a monthly fee for their services. There is still one program left that is absolutely free. That is Ad Calls. This program displays various advertisements on their display while you can use the service to make free calls. There are limitations to this program however. You can only use the service for ten minutes at a time, and you are unable to call toll free numbers.

The major VoIP programs that embrace free calling left on the Internet are bundled with your Instant Messaging programs. Programs such as Yahoo Messenger have recently been redesigned with the ability to make free voice phone calls using VoIP. You won’t be able to call a landline telephone however. You will need to use the program to call another member who is using the same program. For example, if you have the newly VoIP enabled Yahoo Messenger downloaded to your computer, yet your buddy (who lives across the world) is using the old Yahoo Messenger, you can send them a link to download and upgrade their current version. Once they have installed the new Yahoo Messenger, you will see a "call" button with a phone icon at the top of your Yahoo Messenger chat box. By clicking call, you will be using VoIP technology to send a phone call to your buddy’s computer. The receiving computer will actually ring, like a standard telephone, and your buddy will have the option of accepting or declining the phone call. All that is needed is a high speed Internet connection, this provides the best audio quality and speed), a microphone, and speakers. You and your buddy are free to talk as long as you like. The other advantage to Instant Messengers that allow free VoIP calls is the ability to call more than one person. You can call people on your buddy list, and invite them for a conference call. This has unlimited potential and can be used by small businesses for free training calls, and by people everywhere who just want to stay in touch with friends and family.

Other Internet Messaging services that have embraced VoIP calling include MSN messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, and Google has begun their new service, Google Talk.

VoIP is a preferred method of telecommunications due to the fact that you can integrate audio, video, and web based applications with one program. The Instant Messaging programs are perfect examples of how audio and web based communications are working together to increase communication. Also included with many Instant Messaging programs is the ability to hook up a digital camera or web cam and incorporate video with your audio and web based application.

VoIP Telephones are also beginning to incorporate video with their VoIP services. This will be a very popular trend in the future. As there are over 900 million Instant Messaging subscribers, people are already experiencing the power and freedom of converged communications.

Cellular phones are realizing that people want to combine video with their audio, and many videophones are being released. Some phones have gone the next level and have combined audio, video, and graphics by allowing you to store pictures in your telephone, and use it as a camera.

As the technology of VoIP continues to advance, we can rest assured that more "Beta" programs will be released and as that occurs, keep your eye out for more free VoIP programs.

VoIP: The Voice Quality

Once a portion of a voice conversation is encoded and put into an IP packet, there isn’t much that can degrade it - unless the packet doesn’t make it to where it’s going or gets delayed appreciably en route. Either of these can occur when there’s congestion on the IP network.

Virtually all VoIP products use the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and the Real-Time Protocol (RTP), over IP. This means that voice-containing packets that are lost aren’t retransmitted, whereas most IP "data" packets use the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which detects and arranges for retransmission of lost packets.

Still, the various algorithms and protocols used for VoIP react differently to delays and dropped packets. Some VoIP decoding methods will drop any voice packet (a packet containing a voice sample) that is out of sequence or more than, say, 200 ms old. Others have user-settable queues - called "jitter buffers" - that determine how many voice packets/samples will be assembled and how long they’ll be held before being dropped.

Once packets are dropped, different systems have different ways of compensating for the "hole" that is created in the voice stream. Some decoding algorithms will interpolate and create samples to fill these holes; others do nothing, and the missing packets produce interruptions and noise at the receiver’s end. We have found that products vary considerably in the voice quality they deliver under adverse network conditions (typified by heavy congestion).

Since it’s not practical for everyone to build their own test lab and put all the potential products through their paces over both well-behaved and congested IP networks, here are two helpful rules of thumb regarding the characteristics of VOIP products:

• Gateway products that require the least amount of IP network bandwidth per active voice conversation tend to survive better - that is, their voice quality degrades less - as network conditions get worse.

• VoIP products that use smaller IP packets to carry their voice samples survive much better as network congestion gets worse. The smallest voice-containing packet sizes are in the 70-80-byte range; the biggest are 250-300 bytes per voice-containing packet.

Users should be able to query vendors about both of these metrics, and then do their own side-by-side comparison. In comparing voice-over-IP equipment, remember that some (but not all) products offer access to a large number of operational parameters you can tweak to fine-tune voice quality.

In the PSTN, optimum volume levels are well understood. There are generally accepted norms for the relative strength of a voice signal referenced to power (usually measured in dBm, or decibels referenced to a milliwatt), and referenced to background noise (dBrn, or decibels referenced to noise).

However, standards for mapping these norms onto voice-over-IP communications haven’t yet been fully worked out. As a result, some products deliver a voice signal of more-than-sufficient strength (amplitude) but, due to a particular PC’s microphone and speaker, it may simply be too much volume. In this case, the voice quality may sound terrible, because it is set just a little too loud.

VOIP Router: Enabling Standard Phones For Internet Use

A broadband phone service VOIP router enables standard phones to be used for voice calls over the Internet. Telephone calls made over the Internet (VOIP) maximize your broadband investment and is an extraordinarily cost-effective way to make phone calls. Most VOIP routers are manufactured to be locked to a particular service like AT&T. The VOIP router also acts like a router for your network, providing room to connect up to four computers to share a broadband Internet connection. With VOIP router functionality for access to the Internet, and firewall features to keep unwanted intruders out of the network, the VOIP router is a great all-around solution for any small business.

Without a VOIP router your phone will not be able to figure out where datagrams should go from source to destination, so information will inevitably be lost. A VOIP router will help control phone traffic, controls and maintains bandwidth, and ensures a good voice quality for each and every phone call. Basically, a VOIP router is responsible for routing all the information in and out of your home so that you can get the maximum benefits from the services you are using. With commercial services such as Vonage, it is possible to connect the VOIP router into the existing central phone box in the house and have VOIP at every phone already connected. Other services, such as Skype and PeerMe require the use of a computer, so they are limited to single point of calling.

A VOIP router (practically all of them) uses a Web interface for configuration. As such they are all pretty straightforward to configure. Think of the VOIP router with built-in phone ports as a kind of "splitter" for your Internet connection. Just connect the VOIP router to the Internet so that all the computers in your home or office can simultaneously share the Internet. The built-in standard telephone jacks on the VOIP router enables a high-quality, feature-rich telephone service through your broadband connection, even while you're surfing the Internet. With an appropriate Internet VOIP service provider, you'll enjoy much lower domestic and international phone rates, caller ID, call waiting, voicemail, call forwarding, distinctive ring, and lots of other standard phone features.

VOIP Calls: As simple as dialing

Voice Over IP", or in more common terms, a phone service that is utilized over the Internet. If you have a reasonable quality Internet connection you can get your phone service delivered to you through your Internet connection instead, or as well as, from your local phone company if you still utilize a dial-up ISP. While not always the case, more times than often, the faster your Internet connection the better the quality of the calls. Broadband will obviously perform much better than dial-up in most instances.

One technical feature that is driving VOIP calls is use of the session initiation protocol, or SIP. The definition of "SIP" comes straight from the world of instant messaging, where it is used to connect your teenage daughter to all of her online friends when she is supposed to be doing her homework or cleaning her room. What SIP does for VOIP calls is that it creates peer-to-peer telephone connections anywhere in the world. In other words, the phones talk to each other without the need for any kind of a phone switch in the middle. It is a highly integrated phone system without an actual phone company, and the implications of that change are much more than just profound, to say the very least.

At present, there is no risk of everyone swooping out and buying VOIP phones to make VOIP calls and eliminating the plain old telephone service overnight. However, within the next five years there will indeed be some serious worry on the parts of traditional phone companies as to precisely "how" they will somehow make profits from an antiquated system.