VoIP or voice over protocol is one of the latest innovations in communications technology. The main difference it has with the old telephony system is that it uses data packets while the old telephony system uses switch boards.
In case you are not familiar with switchboards, imagine your call being routed to an operator before it reaches the person you are calling. That illustrates how a switchboard works. VoIP uses data packets that are sent and received via the internet. Hence, the basic equipment you will need to enable VoIP is a modem because this is the main device that allows you to get an internet access.
VoIP products come as trunk or hosted. If you are still wishing to use your old telephone device while utilizing VoIP at the same time, you will need to purchase a gateway from VoIP vendors. The gateway comes in a data packet that looks like a box. You would have to connect this to your conventional telephone or fax machine to enable VoIP. However, if you have an IP enabled system, there is no need to purchase the gateway.
There are four ways by which you can make the calls using the VoIP. These include internet-internet, phone-internet, internet-phone, phone-phone. If you are making a call towards a phone, it can be a regular, non-VoIP phone. Otherwise, the recipient of your call also needs to have a VoIP-enabled device. If you are making a call through a computer, you need to have a head set and a VoIP software program. If you are making an internet-internet call, the computer you are calling to must also have the same software as you have. Examples of this software are Skype, that of Yahoo, MSN, etc.
By: Elija James
Posts Tagged ‘Fax Machine’
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January 22nd, 2010What Does the Term Unified Communications Mean?
January 8th, 2010
If you are someone who has cursory information in communication and how information gets from one place to another, you may have heard of unified communications, but if you are someone who works in an information field where data needs to be transferred fast and efficiently, it should be an important consideration for your business! When you are looking at unified communication, you will find that it will tend to be defined as the movement in businesses large and small towards simplifying and integrating every form of communication that they use. In function, unified communication is a combination of a communication system and an infrastructure improvement, and its goal tends to be a situation where a person can get a message on one type of medium and then get it on another.
When looking at unified communication and trying to understand it, consider the advantage of a system where everyone had the maximum amount of availability. If you needed to talk to a co-worker, for example, you could email them a message and they could get it media as different as their phone, their email, their fax machine or their Blackberry. A good unified communication system is one that takes a large number of media into account, and it can have the very important result of bringing the people in your company even closer together.
There are many different reasons why you may wish to look into unified communication, and perhaps the most important one is latency. The larger a company is, the greater the chance that it will be defeated by size and communication difficulties. The larger a project is, the larger the numbers of people who are going to be involved in it, and all of those people have to be acting together. For example, think about trying to get an aspect of a project approved. You will write an email, but what if some of the people are not at their computers that day? While it is unreasonable to expect detailed work from people who are out and about on other business, sometimes you only need a yes or a no, or an acknowledgment.
A unified communication system will ensure that everyone who is involved in a project can be on the same page and that they will be on it faster than they could. The gains in efficiency that this could make are immense. The exploration of a unified communications system means that there will simply be fewer delays that will happen along an entire chain of events. If something is late, it will not be made later by a delayed message!
At the heart of the idea of unified communications is the concept of improved communications and a better effectiveness quotient when large groups of people need to deal with each other. For a workforce that is already significantly more mobile than it was ten or even five years ago, and with every sign that it will only grow more so, unified communications are something that every business should consider.
By: Derek Rogers