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The subject I have chosen to write about is Internet telephony. The reason I have chosen this topic is that I have found it to be very useful myself and I believe it is definitely the way of the future.

Real-time transmission of voice over the Internet, also known as Internet telephony, is attracting a great deal of attention. International Data Corporation predicts that the Internet telephony market will grow from US$3.5 million in 1995, to US$560 million in 1999. Meanwhile, Tarifica in the UK estimates that AT&T will lose between US$620 million and US$950 million in international calls to the Internet by 2001.

Why is Internet telephony attracting so much attention and optimism? The obvious reason is that Internet telephony has the potential to significantly reduce the cost of long distance voice communication. Additionally, Internet telephony introduces entirely new and enhanced ways of communicating. Video conferencing, application sharing, and white-boarding are just a few of the applications that are already accompanying real-time voice communication over the Internet.

There are four main categories of Internet telephony, which will be discussed.

• PC-to-PC telephony. The calling party and the called party speak via their sound cards on their computers. Voice is converted into digital packets and sent over the Internet at the cost of a normal phone call.
• PC-to-Phone. The calling party makes the call from the sound card of their computer and the called party via a normal fixed line phone receives the call. This is a better way to call because the called party does not need access to a computer. This method does however cost the calling party who needs to subscribe to a service provider who owns gateway for communication.
• Phone-to-Phone. This is the latest method of communication and is by far the best method. Both the calling party and the called party need access to a computer with the Internet. The users do not even need to switch their computer on. All they do is use a special piece of hardware to make the call and everything else is automatic. The sound quality using this method is also better.

These three categories are discussed in more detail at a later stage. On can also see in more detail the advantages and disadvantages of each of these methods. Gateways are also discussed as they play an extremely important with regards to Internet telephony.

One can see from the content that Internet Telephony is definitely a viable method of communication and will keep on growing substantially every year.