Hi, On Sun, 19 Nov 2000, you wrote: > Does anyone know how this internet telephony work ? Quite nicely, with sufficient bandwidth.. You need about a 28.8K segment of bandwidth to carry a high-quality full-duplex voice connection. I would like to know > how expensive it is to set it up and what kind of hardware and software > I need. My goal is to see if I can get around the long distance > companies to make international calls in carrier grade quality. any > thoughts ? .... The best hardware solution I have seen for for dedicated VOIP is the InterStar IP Star by DSG technology. You need a minimum of two boxes, at a cost of around $200 US per box. The IP Star presents a standard 10/100 RJ-45 UTP interface for data, and an RJ-11C interface for an analog (POTS) telephone device. In effect, you can plug an old-fashioned analog telephone into this box and place calls across the LAN or internet by dialing the IP address of the remote box. There are also solutions for VOIP to landline, and vice-versa. The management of DSG also seems quite responsive: I phoned them about a firmware bug that I discovered in the unit, and the software engineer literally corrected it on-the-fly, offering his thanks & apologies. I have tried the system with fax machines, and fax worked fine across the LAN. Lag was in the milliseconds, and voice quality was comperable to a cordless telephone. The only competing product that offered as much performance was the Multu-VOIP from Multi-Tech (made right here in good old MN). But at 5x the cost, the IP Star was the obvious price / performance choice. -- Bill Layer Sales Technician <b.layer at vikingelectronics.com> +----------------------------------+ Viking Electronics, Inc. 1531 Industrial St. Hudson, WI. 54016 - U.S.A 715.386.8861 ext. 210 <http://www.vikingelectronics.com> +----------------------------------+ "Telecom Solutions for the 21st Century" Powered by Slackware Linux 7.1.0