An article I found on Internet Telephony today in the New York Times. reference: <http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/0805telephony.html> article also contained a diagram of a traditional Point-to-point synchronous phone call and a packet-switched Internet call which shoed pieces of a sentence being transferred over multiple routes. " _ Free Long Distance Phone Calls! (Computer Extra)_ By PETER H. LEWIS Sometimes Internet technology moves faster than the speed of sound. Nearly 400 Intel Corp. engineers were waiting for Brian Frank to stage a demonstration of Internet telephones last week at a business meeting in Oregon, when suddenly his laptop computer started ringing. Frank, a summer intern, had just finished loading new software that would let him place a phone call from his laptop to an associate's PC backstage. But before he could make the call, someone in Norway had seen Frank's network connection pop up on an Internet phone directory on the World Wide Web and dialed him up. " [..snip..] " For the Intel engineers, it was an industry wake-up call. Hitherto a hacker's hobby, the use of microphones and computers to place phone calls, send faxes and transmit pager signals over the Internet now seems ready to emerge as a serious business opportunity. " [..snip..] " Technical drawbacks still keep Internet telephony from being a true substitute for the good old, reliable telephone network. And yet, the number of regular Internet telephone users is expected to rise from fewer than 400,000 last year to 16 million by 1999, according to a forecast from the research company International Data Corp. By that year, IDC predicts, Internet telephony could constitute a $500 million market. Beyond cheap phone calls, the possible applications include: -- Catalogue shopping on the World Wide Web, where the customer could speak live with a sales agent. -- Work-team software that would enable groups working collaboratively on documents via the Internet to converse about the project, too. -- Adding voice capabilities to multiplayer computer games like "Doom" or "Quake," so that teammates could coach one another and jeer the opposition. " [..snip..] " In fact, Intel and Microsoft late last month jointly announced a set of technical standards that are intended to promote compatibility among various makes of hardware and software used in Internet telephony. " [..snip..] " "A lot of people look at Internet telephony as a replacement or alternative for long-distance service, and that's the most obvious use for it today," said Frederic H. Yeomans, marketing manager for Intel's Internet and communications group in Hillsboro, Ore. But Yeomans said the technology was advancing so quickly that new applications, possibly ones not yet imagined, would inevitably arise. " (hype? You make the call..) [..snip..] " Telephone companies appear to be divided over how to respond to the technological challenges. "Everyone would agree it's a compelling, alternative form of communication, and we're excited about it," said Mark Fisher, vice president for Pacific Bell Internet Services in San Francisco, a unit of the regional Bell holding company Pacific Telesis. " [..snip..] " Other, smaller phone companies are not as optimistic, and are mounting a legal and lobbying challenge to try to halt competition from the computer industry. " [..snip..] NYT-08-04-96 1932EDT Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company ... What follows is more hype about a "killer app" that will bring this technology to the forefront. Little is said about current bandwitdth limitations or PC technology limitations. Nothing is said of crypto technology either. me -------------------------------------------------------------- Omegaman <omega@bigeasy.com> PGP Key fingerprint = 6D 31 C3 00 77 8C D1 C2 59 0A 01 E3 AF 81 94 63 send a message with the text "get key" in the "Subject:" field to get a copy of my public key. --------------------------------------------------------------