How Net Telephony Works 1. The telephone call starts from a PC that has special software to convert the sounds into digital codes, which are then passed on to... 2. The Internet Service Provider (ISP), which breaks the digital messages up into packets--pieces of the message each encoded with a destination address. The packets go to... 3. The Internet. Using packets allows multiple parties to share digital lines so data transmission is much more efficient than traditional phone conversations, each of which requires a line. The packets go to... 4. The Internet Telephone Service Provider (ITSP), which reassembles the packets as they arrive and converts them to speech. It goes to... 5. The traditional public telephone network, which directs the call to the right phone number. The ITSP charges for the local call and a handling fee. Return to main story

Updated Oct. 16, 1997 by bwwebmaster
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