How to make a VOIP call from a cell phone
Voice over IP (VoIP) is just a method of making a call, like a telephone, except using your PC and broadband Internet connection (DSL, cable, etc.) It basically uses a phone-like analog device to convert your call to digital packets which are sent over the Internet to either another VoIP phone, or can also call regular numbers in countries where that is supported.
VoIP provides local and long-distance service, and some out-of-country / overseas service (primarily to Canada, Europe & India, some to Mexico.) Please note that not all countries can be called, contrary to what some articles claim, unless you are calling VoIP-to-VoIP directly. International calls are still very limited at this time.
To try to use this with a cell phone is possible but currently very difficult at this time. There are several cell/mobile phone applications you can purchase and run but more phones do not have the computing power to run the software. They also require the cell phone to have Wi-Fi capabilities, which few phones do (most use Bluetooth, a different type of wireless connection.) The phones that will work, like the Nokia 6136 and Motorala A910, the only two I’ve been able to use, are very expensive.
As of March 2007, a press release on Reuters announced:
“Several big names in the communications sector, including Microsoft, Nokia, and Skype, announced mobile phone-based VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) products and services that could radically change how cellular customers use their handsets in the future.”
The downside of this latest development is that it requires all new phones and service plans from the major VoIP provider, Skype, who is part of this. The other major provider is Vonage, and then a number of other, smaller and
less-reliable ones.
As of April 2007, after a shakeup at Vonage and the removal of their CEO, they have announced they are also developing a “WiFi”-based cell phone version that will work with their home system as well as at any Wi-Fi “hot spot”. No date for the release of this new product has been announce.
At some point, cell phones will start using their wireless Bluetooth support to allow you to connect to your personal or local wireless network and use that instead of transmitting to a cell phone tower. This would be a great feature for a cell phone to have, in case you aren’t near a cell tower, as many places offer free Wi-Fi connections, but as of April 2007 I don’t know of any cell phone that offers this feature, which would make great sense if they did.
But for now, until the Nokia/Skype product is available or unless you can afford the high-end mobile/cell phones and the application to support VOIP, this is really something that’s too new to be affordable and reliable, so I would say that it’s at least a year or two before it will be worthwhile to look into.
My advice would be that this is an emerging technology and unless you’re an “early adaptor” (read: geek gadget) then it’s best to wait awhile to see how this all works out. I predict that by 2008 there will be one or more VOIP phones that will work with WiFi and act in many ways like a cell phone.
Voice Over – Part 1
Many people want a voice over career, but they have no idea where to begin. The first pace you must start, if you wish to have a successful voice over career, is by getting as much education as possible. Like any other career it is important to take the time to ensure that you are properly trained. Since performing voice over work differs from acting, it is important to make sure that in addition to any theater or acting training one might have, that those seeking voice over careers work with an experienced trainer or coach.
Though training is important for a successful voice over career, it is important to realize that those who have the most potential in this field will have natural talent as well as abilities. You must be able to show various expressions in your voice and have natural ability for storytelling. It’s important to choose a trainer or school that will cultivate the natural talents one has for voice over work as well as provide training in the areas regarding digital studios and recording. Not everyone is suited for voice over work, and though many people may think that a career in voice over work would be great, it can be very difficult and frustrating. Patience and determination are two necessary keys to those who will have a lasting career in voice over work.
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When choosing a voice over school, you should make certain that you feel comfortable with the teachers and the faculty members. If you are receiving individual training, be sure to ask for the teacher’s references. He or she should be an expert in their field and be able to provide you with their accomplishments in the industry. Your trainer will work with you and help prepare you for a career in television as well as radio. One of the benefits of voice over work is that those who are trained can freelance from their own home offices.
Once you begin training, you’ll find that the key to your success is in frequent practice. It’s also important to record yourself so that you can accurately judge your abilities and further your skills. When you feel comfortable with your skill and have developed a degree of professionalism, you will need to record a demo cd. Your demo cd will be the equivalent of your business card. As you seek out new projects to work on, your demo cd will be used to market and promote your talent and abilities.
Networking is absolutely critical to the success of any voice over career. You will need to do your homework and take the time to meet people in the industry. By socializing with industry professionals you’ll have ample opportunity to promote your services.
It’s also wise to start small and work your way up. Though you may have a set idea of how and where you would like to begin, it is wise to invest your energies into small local projects so that you can build your resume. You should also set goals to ensure that you are moving forward with your career. By marketing yourself, working on your resume, and networking with industry professionals, you’ll have the contacts needed to advance your career and reach your goals.
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Blocking Skype Won’t be Easy
The recent surge in Internet VoIP carriers such as Skype, Vonage, and Net2phone, has fueled a political debate unforeseen as recently as five years ago. This controversy presents a new plot twist in the ever-unfolding soap opera of government deregulation and who has rights to the last mile of customer wire.
Traditional CLEC providers make most of their money from residential phone and DSL lines. Now they are seeing competition from non-traditional carriers running VoIP services on the very DSL lines funded by the traditional CLECs and cable providers. These third parties pipe phone service down their wires without a penny of revenue to the CLECs that provided that infrastructure.
If you are a savvy reader that keeps up to date with the trade mags, you are likely aware that this controversy has all the human voyeuristic interest normally reserved for tabloids. The players don’t have names like Pitt and Hilton, but instead Skype, Qwest, Comcast and Vonage. You likely have seen various editorials and commentaries on two or more sides beating this subject to death.
For now, I am going to leave the debate alone. Let’s just focus on the operational strategy: How to deal with specific traffic on a data line and how this can be applied to the special case of Skype.
As CTO of APconnections, a company that specializes in bandwidth control and traffic shaping, I am well informed on the subject of carriers blocking competitor’s traffic on their data networks. I am often asked if we can come up with a solution to block (insert evil music here) “Skype†traffic. Skype and Vonage have become the scourge of ISP service providers who are looking to offer phone service for a fee bundled with their data services. The obvious conclusion for the owner of the data line is to just block these hobos altogether and be done with it.
While blocking most data traffic is easily accomplished, I must confess up front I have feigned a few efforts at blocking Skype only to retreat to fight another day after being soundly defeated. What follows is a short tutorial on traffic blocking, made simple for the casual reader of technology. After we cover the general case of traffic blocking we’ll cover the special case of why blocking Skype traffic is a different animal.
Diving right into the mechanics of traffic shaping by application, the first lesson involves how to recognize traffic on a network. As you are likely aware, all traffic on the Internet travels around in what is called an IP packet. An IP packet can very simply be thought of as a string of characters moving from Computer A to Computer B. The string of characters is called the “payload,†much like the freight inside a railroad car. On the outside of this payload, or data, is the address where it is being sent. These two elements, the address and the payload, comprise the complete IP packet.
In the case of different applications on the Internet we would expect to see different kinds of payloads. For example, let’s take the example of a skyscraper being transported from New York to Los Angeles. How could this be done by using a freight train? Common sense suggests that one would disassemble the office tower, stuff it into as many freight cars as it takes to transport it, and then when the train arrived in Los Angeles hopefully the workers on the other end would have the instructions on how to reassemble the tower.
Well, this analogy works with almost anything that is sent across the Internet, only the payload is some form of data, not a physical hunk of bricks, metal and wires. If we were sending a Word document as an e-mail attachment, guess what, the contents of the document would be disassembled into a bunch of IP packets and sent to the receiving e-mail client where it would be re-assembled. If I looked at the payload of each Internet packet in transit, I could actually see snippets of the document in each packet and could quite easily read the words as they went by.
This is the basis of traffic blocking: Look inside Internet packets and see if you can tell what they are. Conceptually, there is really nothing more to it.
Now moving beyond the simple case of sending a Word file, let’s suppose that we are sending a phone call from user A to user B. How does that work in a traditional sense? Perhaps you have heard of SIP or H323 as common VoIP protocols. We need to make a small conceptual hop from the e-mail attachment example to a live phone call moving across the Internet, but I can assure you this is quite painless. When sending a live a stream of voice data using the Internet you need to stuff pieces of the digitized phone call into a series of IP packets. Special equipment on the front end of the phone call digitizes the voice data and stuffs it into an IP packet, it is sent, and at the other side it’s reassembled into comprehensible voice emulation.
It is possible for an appliance to monitor the data going across the lines, categorize it and display it. Digitized voice data is much different than a Word file in transport because digitized voice when displayed as ASCII characters looks like a mess of garbled goop. It is conspicuously random, so much so that there is no easily discernible pattern and you can forget about human readable words.
So how would one tell that the data going over an Internet connection is a voice call?
Before the invention of Skype, things were quite simple. One nice thing about all these standard VoIP solutions from Avaya, Toshiba, Cisco, and others is that you could see a very predictable human readable information exchange between two endpoints just prior to the actual phone call. This is what is commonly referred to “call set up.†Before a voice phone call commenced it was common for the two phone systems to exchange data that mimicked a human conversation:
Computer A: “Hey buddy, I am about to send you a call.â€
Computer B response: “Not now, I am busy.â€
These call setup formalities are sent back and forth inside IP packets as very human readable text streams. Although perhaps it might not be as comprehensible as “Hey Buddy, I am about to call you,†it is often clear just by reading the text what is going on.
Meanwhile, there are various automated devices engineered by commercial companies that specialize in detecting all sorts of Internet traffic including voice. Some corporations purchase these devices intent on stopping streaming audio, or perhaps to give priority to Citrix traffic.
The list of types of things and reasons for detecting and giving special treatment to various data streams of traffic is endless, and would be an interesting subject in itself, but for now let’s get back to detecting voice and the special case of Skype traffic.
Scenario 1: Direct End Point to End Point VoIP
If you recall, with voice calls, once the call is up and in progress, the data payload looks like garbled goop and that is not specifically identifiable as a call in progress. Thus, it is important to see the set up in action. The set up of the call between two IP phones is easily detectable. By remembering the IP addresses involved in the setup, you can safely assume that future traffic between the two IP addresses is a phone call and block traffic between the two.
Scenario 2: Centralized VoIP Source
The previous scenario assumes two IP end points talking to each other. Another version of VoIP phone service uses a VoIP PBX. In this scenario all phone calls emanate from a common PBX which has a well-known IP address, so it is just a matter of blocking any traffic to or from that IP address of the PBX if you want to stop voice traffic. Watching a network of this type will yield one common IP address that always seems to be sending common identifiable call setup messages to other IP addresses. Once you know this, you only need to remember the IP address of one party (the PBX) and you can take care of future calls.
Scenario 3: Centralized Broker
In a third scenario a centralized broker is used to set up phone calls. This would typically involve a form of PBX that arranges a contract between two VoIP phones to talk directly to one another. The centralized PBX is contacted by one of the parties wishing to make a call. It then contacts the destination party to arrange the call. During this brokered set up process one could see the setup communication of the broker within the IP packets. The conversation would go something like:
Computer A to broker: “Hi, I’d like to call my friend in Miami but all I have is his name. Can you arrange an IP call for me?â€
Broker to Computer A: “Yes, just a second, I’ll look him up.â€
Broker to Computer B: “Hey Miami, a phone in Los Angeles would like to make a phone call . . . “
Well, you get the idea. The final phone call would again be a stream of garbled goop, but by listening to the context of the setup one could determine both IP addresses about to engage in a phone call and block the call plus future traffic between the two of them.
So now you know my entire library of knowledge and secrets about detecting VoIP traffic. It is time to move on to what I don’t know about Skype.
Skype calls appear to talk point-to-point when a call is finally set up and active. This activity I can see by setting up Skype calls in my laboratory. Of course I know beforehand what the two endpoints are, and therefore I can see the Skype traffic whizzing by on my sniffer. However, when examining the stream I failed to see any human discernible call set up, so without prior knowledge of a call being made, I could never be certain if what I was seeing was a Skype call.
Skype setup appears to take place with a common broker, however the set up appears to have no intelligible human readable pattern. The setup portion of a Skype appears as just garbled goop.
It appears that Skype uses a distributed topology where calls are set up from a number of various ever-changing brokers. If Skype used a common broker I could learn the IP address of that broker and hence I would know anybody talking to it is setting up a Skype call. But without a well-known common broker, there is no generic way I can look for contact to a broker.
To date, all my common tricks for determining VoIP traffic on the Internet have been thwarted by the Skype designers. I have no idea if this result was a deliberate attempt to thwart detection or just an unintended side effect of their design. Perhaps a reader with inside knowledge will step forward and answer this and other questions. For now I have plenty on my plate, so I’ll leave the mystery of Skype detection to my contemporaries.
VoIP Carriers: a Replacement for Traditional Means of Connectivity
The VoIP carriers have become an ultimate means of achieving connectivity or terminating calls with ease. This works well as the carriers have merged their services with other higher version network providers. This has, in a way, resolved the issue of fast connectivity at low rates for many users – business or otherwise.
In general, the VoIP carriers offer their services to the resellers. The system follows a three tier rule. Tier 1 carriers offer their services to Tier 2 that in turn enables the functioning of Tier 3. The Tire 1 consists of those companies that come with their physical network either in one country or in some regions of the world. The carriers at this level can terminate the voice traffic or can carry forward a call using their own equipment and expertise. The second is the Tier 2 that consists of companies that take the network of Tier1 on leases it in order to terminate international calls. The Tier 3 consists of service providers that make use of Tier 2 or Tier 1 carriers to terminate international calls.
With the introduction of VoIP, several technologies have converged so as to enable a more reliable and sophisticated service in the realms of communication. The convergence of the Internet with other allied networks has led to the generation of an infrastructure that supports the carriers and suppliers of IP telephony services more comprehensively. As there are several suppliers of origination services, so now the VoIP carriers prefer to have connections that give them the flexibility to switch to different origination services as and when the need arises.
This new capability in VoIP carrier service is achieved by a Session Internet Protocol (SIP) that is actually another interconnection. This connection provides unique efficiencies in networking and also maintains flexibility in its design so as to cater to the needs of different categories of carrier customers. Though SIP allows the customer to switch to different origination services but it is actually based on inbound and outbound call service. That is to say that once an inbound call is received, the customers can use the ‘Global Crossing Carrier’ or outbound service to send the call back to its destination. So, for a VoIP service provider, SIP is used as a gateway for telephony, internet conferencing, events notification and instant messaging.
The VoIP carrier service is not just restricted to the use of telephone connections and computers. There is more than one way of assessing these services. Quite a few carriers have expanded their services to mobile phones as well. The Wi-Fi technology has enabled receiving of voice over IP services in mobile phones. In fact, the fixed wire-line service providers are facing stringent competition from the mobile “Voice over IP” service providers. In case of mobile, the technology works well if the location where it is installed is Wi-Fi enabled. However, a location can be converted to Wi-Fi so as to access such a service. So, now offices, homes and college campuses can easily be converted so as to allow every mobile user to access voice over IP services. In case of mobiles, the mobile service providers have to collaborate with other VoIP carrier service providers. This would help avoid any controversies.
Why is everyone on about XML?
In the traditional world, a telephone handset was a telephone handset. In the new world of IP, what looks like a telephone handset is in fact a computer. If it’s an Alcatel IP handset then it’s a dumb terminal driven by a presentation server and if it’s a Cisco IP handset, it’s more or less a PC. The only restriction is the size and type of the display. In both cases the telephone interface is a web browser and as fashion accessory the IP telephone can sit where you the PC can’t. We know all of this because Ghost Software, with its offshore software development resource, deals with a variety of IP platforms both in terms of Computer Telephony Integration and Voice over IP. This makes the IP handset ideal for retail, like shops in a shopping mall, in reception areas and banking foyers as well as in a ward in a hospital or a school library. What drives applications on these handsets is XML. So what kind of applications makes the purchasing of an IP handset worthwhile? In the early days of XML, people were populating browsers with Yellow Pages, stocks and share prices, news and weather updates. Sure, they look great but they didn’t justify the price premium of the hardware. Our research shows that what’s required are some traditional telephony orientated applications or specialist vertical market applications, the latter having its own set of unique problems.
We have, we think, three and a half generic applications that are so compelling, that people will pay the hardware handset premium to have them. The first is the ability to send SMS messages from a landline either to one, or broadcasted to many mobile handsets. Whilst this application will work with any XML handset, it is particularly suited to the Alcatel IP Touch range, with its built in Qwerty keyboard, This allows for easy integration of SMS into the general portfolio of business communication. Anyone with an external sales force will have an immediate need. Next is an application called “XPOP†It’s a basic screen pop application that always resided on a PC, so you can see who is calling by capturing the caller’s number and querying the database. Now we can extract the information and populate an XML phone browser. It’s fairly straightforward to build a driver that integrates into the most common contact management databases and in most cases the interface will give you the ability for one click dial out by name. Last but not least is an outbound dialler. Some people in the world want a predictive dial solution, but we think that’s too niche. A general purpose low-priced dialer that allows people to log in and log out, that reschedules busy calls that gives you one round of call completion codes (Sale made; brochure sent and not interested for example) is good enough for most general businesses. And what about the “half!?†– well, that’s ShortEmail. That’s the ability to send and receive emails on the IP handset. It’s so simple it’s hardly an application, but it is ideal for places where you can’t house a PC, like a hospital ward where you might want to send a quick email “Bring food quickly!â€
Now, there are vertical market applications. The size, shape and composition of these is endless. Off the top of my head, here are three. (1) The books of a school library. –displayed on an IP handset. Students can see whether books are in or out and reserve them. (2) Lost case notes in a hospital. Patients go from ward to ward and often their case notes get left behind. An application which broadcasts to all departments with an option to reply if you have them is ideal, and (3) Hospitality software, where staff can enter a pin code when they have cleaned a room or you can order room service from your handset. The problem is, however, that if you go to a business and say what do you want? – The answer is invariably “we don’t know!†The solution is to build demo applications which have a feature set but they are hard-coded (this means they’re quicker to develop) and once you show it, everyone knows what’s wrong with it. And….hey presto, you have a brief. This is the way we have worked over recent months with some very good results. For any further information about what is written here, you can contact us on enquiries@ghost-software.com or contact Ghost Software at any of its local offices.
