The internet for communications

This chapter explains basic concepts related to use of Internet for communications. Internet communications is advancing so rapidly that the only way to keep track of developments is by regularly browsing the Internet. A very interesting and significant global development is the changeover from traditional MAN/WAN architectures, used for linking company resources over large geographical areas, to Internet communication. Internet communication has some benefits including, lower costs and simplicity of interconnection imposed by the necessity of standardizing on TCP/IP. The advantage of the current generation of Internet communications products lies therein that they coexist on the already established Internet, PSTN (public switched telephone network) and PBX (private branch exchange) infrastructure. Internet communications products are predominantly software-based and in many cases, they are available either as freeware or shareware. For the top-end products, it may be necessary to purchase dedicated Internet interfaces for telephones or fax machines, but in these cases the end-users are typically medium to large enterprises and the capital outlay can be justified in terms of cost savings. This chapter explains concepts related to the speed/bandwidth issues. It explains various options for e-mail as well as the use of voice over IP and also discusses how voice mail is performed using TCP/IP.