[plug] VOIP and ADSL

[Tomasz Grzegurzko]

On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 10:25 AM, Bret Busby <bret at busby.net> wrote:
>
> Hello, everyone.
>
> In the thread about ADSL and Linux, reference was made to VOIP.
>
> I have a webcam that can apparently be used for making video phone calls
> across the Internet. I have yet to install it, and an email message to
> Ekiga, to find out about getting a SIP account with them, which is
> apparently necessary, and whether the camera is compatible, returned a
> response in Dutch, which I do not understand.
>
> Is VOIP access and a VOIP modem required to make video phone calls?

Really depends on which kind of VOIP and what you want to do. Skype is
VOIP. But so is signing on to Ekiga's provider (umm I forget who, but
there's tonnes of free sip servers you can sign up to out there) and
creating a SIP account. iiNet use SIP for their voip, most ISPs do as
it's what modems support instead of propietary Skype protocol. So what
you need for VOIP is Internet and a VOIP client. Ekiga is an example,
I think there's Kphone also.

The differences with some SIP providers is that they give you a number
that people can dial from their telephone, these are usually the paid
ones. iiNet sip does this for example and that's why you can get naked
DSL since you can still have a telephone with a landline, albeit phone
calls go over the adsl side of things..

Ekiga supports making video calls also so that's where your web cam
will come in handy. Whether you go for dial up, ADSL, or ADSL2/+ etc,
doesn't really matter. A standard telephone call over VOIP can work
over dial up -- just don't do anything else on the Internet at the
time, and don't even think about video. But ADSL (any anything later)
is fine for voice and video, so that really again just reinforces the
fact that all you need is internet and a voip client. Really not much
different to web surfing, all you need is internet and a web client in
that case.

Ahh the beauty of TCP/IP...

Tomasz