What is the difference between IP phone and general telephone?

Today IP phone is a familiar term, the so-called IP phone is relative to the traditional telephone, its biggest advantage is to make full use of the existing telephone lines, with the help of the ubiquitous Internet network for voice transmission, thus significantly reducing the cost of calls, so the user is very popular and respected.

In the understanding of the IP phone before, let us first explain what the IP is the meaning of IP. IP is the abbreviation of the English Internet Protocol, the Chinese name for the "network protocol", it is the Internet of different computers for data exchange of basic protocols, in other words, it is the Internet in the different computers to "communicate". In other words, it is the main bridge for different computers to "communicate" on the Internet. In other words, it is the main bridge for different computers to communicate on the Internet. Understanding this, it is not difficult to understand that IP telephony is actually a communication network that realizes real-time transmission of voice information through the TCP/IP protocol to achieve the purpose of mutual communication between people.

The principle of IP telephony

On a normal day, when we make an ordinary phone call, whether it is a local phone call or a long-distance phone call, the two sides of the call must take up a temporary special line, and in the course of the call the line shall not be occupied by others. However, in fact, this call line can not be 100% utilization, most of them are wasted.

The biggest difference between IP telephony and ordinary telephony is that it makes full use of the Internet, based on the TCP/IP protocol on the basis of specialized equipment or software to digitize the caller's voice signals after sampling, and at the same time compressed and packaged, the voice information is converted into a small packet of data, which is free to search for the free space of the network through the network to transmit voice information to the other party's specialized equipment or the other side of the packet. These small packets of data through the network to freely find free space on the network, the voice information will be transmitted to the other party, the other party's specialized equipment or software to receive the voice packets, decompression and reduction into analog signals sent to the phone. In this way, although the process seems to be very troublesome, but the call process does not have to establish a special line, but only the use of the network, greatly saving the cost of calls, which is why the call to the IP phone is so cost-effective reason for it.

The three modes of IP telephony and how to use them

Speaking here, I think we should understand that IP telephony is actually a telephony application realized through the TCP/IP protocol, which is mainly used by PC to PC, PC to Phone, and Phone to Phone in three ways, and we'll talk about it below.

PC to PC

This approach is suitable for those who have a multimedia computer (sound card must be full-duplex, with a microphone) and can be connected to the Internet users, the premise of the call is that the two sides of the computer must be installed in the same set of Internet phone software.

We recommend the use of MediaRing Talk 99, which is developed by the U.S. company MediaRing a free software for Internet telephony, the voice effect is good, but also comes with a phone book, voice messages, text conversations, call logs and other practical features, and therefore doubly popular among users. You can visit its official website at www.mediaring.com下载获得.

1. Install the software: See the welcome screen of MediaRing Talk? Click on the "Install" button, and the rest of the steps will be easy to follow.

2. The Configuration Wizard will help you configure the hardware devices such as modem, speakers, microphone, etc. Once everything is configured and detected, MediaRing Talk basically guarantees that you can make and receive Internet calls.

(1) To start the configuration, click "Next" to continue.

(2) Select the network connection you want to use to go online. When necessary, the software can automatically dial up the Internet based on this network connection scheme.

(3) Select your modem type to send a ringing tone signal to the party you are dialing.

(4) Test Speaker: Once the system detects that you have a full-duplex sound card, it will test that your speakers or headphones are connected and turned on. Click on "Test Speaker", and if everything is working well, a pleasant welcome message will come out of the headset.

(5) Test Microphone: To test your microphone, click on "Test Microphone" and read the blue text in the picture, the system will test your microphone to see if it is working properly.

(6) Prompt the end of the configuration.

3. Register an account: Next, you must have a registered account in order to use the software to make and receive Internet calls, as well as to make it easier for others to make calls to you or send voice messages.

(1) After the configuration is complete, you will be automatically connected to the MediaRing Talk website to register. Please be patient and fill in the form carefully.

(2) Click the yellow button icon in the main interface, and fill in the account you just applied in the window as shown in Figure 9.

4. Make a phone call

After the two steps of registration and configuration, you can now enter the world of Internet Phone. MediaRing Talk not only supports PC to PC call, but also supports PC to Phone call, which we will mention later. With PC to PC calling, you don't need to pay any extra charges except for the Internet and local call charges.

We need to know the MediaRing number of the person we are calling, including the country code and area code. Then select the country code from the "Country" drop-down list in the dialing box, or fill in the code directly if you already know it, such as 86 for China, and then fill in the area code and phone number in the corresponding box. Finally, press the first "Dial" button on the left below the window to make a call.

(1) Select the type of call you want to make as "PC to PC".

(2) Select the country code from the drop-down list to save you the trouble of looking up the country code.

(3) Enter the city code. This can be done either from the keyboard or by pressing a key in the "telephone".

(4) Enter the subscriber number, which can also be entered by clicking the mouse through the telephone keypad.

(5) Click the "Call" button, MediaRing will find out whether the other party is also logged in the server through the server, if so, the other party's MediaRing will ring automatically, if the other party answers, both parties can talk through MediaRing.

Summary: This online point-to-point call is the prototype of IP telephony applications, and it has the advantage of being quite convenient and economical, but the disadvantages are obvious, that is, the caller and the caller must agree on a time to access the Internet at the same time, and this is quite a hassle in the ordinary business world, so this approach can not be commercialized or entered into the field of public communications.

PC to Phone

With the benefits of IP telephony gradually being recognized, many telecom companies have built on this foundation, thus enabling ordinary phone calls to be made from computers.

As the caller's computer, it is required to have multimedia functions, be able to connect to the Internet, and install the software of IP phone, here we still take MediaRing Talk as an example to talk about the realization of the steps.

1. Select the type of call to be made as "PC to Phone".

2. Select the country code from the drop-down list, which eliminates the need to search for the country code.

3. Enter the city code. You can enter it from the keyboard or by pressing a key in the "telephone".

4. Enter the subscriber number, which can also be entered by clicking on the mouse through the telephone keypad.

5. Click the "Call" button, MediaRing will find out if the other party is also logged in the server, if so, the other party's MediaRing will ring automatically, if the other party answers, the two parties can make a call through MediaRing.

A dialog box will pop up asking you to enter your Value Fone account and password to ensure that you can make the call. Note: If you don't have a ValueFone account and you're eager to test making a VoIP call, you can find a few 800 toll-free numbers in the U.S. or Canada to test it out.

Summary: The benefits of making a computer-to-market-type call are obvious, and the called party can have a regular phone, but in addition to paying for Internet access and the cost of a market call, you must also pay MediaRing, which will open a Value Fone account with MediaRing, and pay in US dollars. The way to pay is to open an account named "Value Fone" in MediaRing and pay in dollars. This method is currently used to make calls to foreign countries, but it is still very inconvenient and does not meet the public's need to make calls at any time.

Note: Value Fone accounts can be purchased online at online supermarkets on certain domestic websites (e.g., Tianji.com, Beijing Yun.com, etc.) in denominations of $10, $25, $50, and $100, which can be paid in RMB, The account can be purchased online in denominations of $10, $25, $50, and $100, and can be paid for in RMB.

Phone to Phone

This method of "phone to phone" requires the support of an IP telephony system, which generally consists of three parts: a phone, a gateway, and a network manager. The telephone is a telephone terminal that can be connected to the local gateway through the local telephone network; the gateway is the interface between the Internet network and the telephone network, and it is also responsible for voice compression; the network administrator is responsible for user registration and management, including access to the user's identity authentication, call logging, and detailed data (for billing) and so on.

Now each telecom operator has set up its own IP network to compete for the domestic market, they are all in the way of telephone billing card to realize the call from ordinary telephone to ordinary telephone.

The following is an example of the IP phone card issued by China Jitong, and a brief description of the operation.

1. Dial the Jitong access number 17920 on an ordinary telephone;

2. Select the language according to the voice prompts, press 1 for Chinese; press 2 for English;

3. Input the card number;

4. Input the PIN;

5. Directly dial the domestic or international long distance, and confirm by pressing the "# " sign to confirm.

Note: At present, there are several major operators competing, including China Telecom, Unicom, Netcom and Jitong. China Telecom has the best call quality, followed by Netcom; Unicom has the widest reach; and Jitong is the first telecom operator to realize billing for IP calls in 6-second increments.

Summary: This is a more ideal way of IP telephony as it makes full use of the current telephone lines and meets the needs of users to communicate at any time.

Money-saving tips

Through the understanding of the above several ways to make IP phone calls, most people will choose the inexpensive IP phone card, which is due to its low price and simple and convenient access. As we know, there are several domestic IP telephony service providers competing with China Telecom, Unicom, Jitong, Netcom, etc. So as a consumer, how can we spend the least amount of money to get the most benefits?

1. Buy a card with a discount

Today's IP phone cards have long been sold at a discount, and there are IP phone cards for sale at major newsstands, post offices, and telecom agencies everywhere. Another special place where you can buy cheaper IP phone cards is online shopping malls, such as Sina Mall, Ebay, Silicon Valley Mall, Cloud.com Inc. and so on. Among such IP phone cards, the cheapest one has to be Unicom's IP phone card, which is discounted up to 64%! The same denomination, the same service, but with different discounts, making many people moved.

2. Making IP Calls

IP phone cards are saving people a lot of money on calls and gaining more and more trust, so more and more people like to use them to make domestic and international calls. Let's take a look at the table below, this is the domestic IP provider's call rate table, domestic long-distance is the same as each other, while the international long-distance is very different, in the end which IP phone card to call the international long-distance is the most economical, I believe that the smart readers will be able to look at a clear, clear, clear.

When it comes to domestic long-distance calls, some people may think that since the rate of each provider is the same as 0.3 yuan/minute, it is only natural to think that there is no difference between them. In fact, we have already said, Jitong company took the lead in the opening of the IP phone in seconds (6 seconds) for the unit of billing, therefore, if your call time and can not be properly put the right "minutes" of this degree, then, the use of Jitong company's IP phone card can save you a sum of money. Let's do a little math. If you make a domestic call for 1 minute and 6 seconds, the difference between the $0.6 billed by other providers and the $0.33 billed by Jitong is $0.27, which is quite impressive.

Another issue we should also note is that users are charged the local call rate of the calling number after dialing the access number provided by the service provider. As we all know, there is a long list of account numbers plus passwords for IP phone cards, and each time you dial in, you have to enter them on the phone, which is not only troublesome, but also prolongs the dialing time, which inadvertently increases the outlay for local calls. Now the phone is basically with the function of storing the number, then you may want to use this function to change the phone to "IP Phone Direct Dial". That is, the IP card dial-in number, account number, password, etc. were stored in the memory key "1", "2", "3", and then you can follow the prompts to conveniently dial the IP phone. When dialing in this way, first press the memory key "1" to automatically dial the IP access number, select the voice type and then press the memory key "2" so that you can quickly enter the account number, and similarly, press the memory key "3

Also worth mentioning is the mobile communication IP phone, now the main domestic China Mobile and China Unicom two mobile communication service providers, you can use a dialing method or the second dialing method to use the mobile IP phone. Once dialing means that the user only need to dial the service provider's access number and continuous one-time dialing each other's phone number can be, without entering the account number and password and other information, such as Guangzhou users to call a fixed-line telephone users in Chongqing, you can dial the following number: 17951 + 023 + 89563256. two dialing means that the use of ordinary IP card account to dial the IP phone on the cell phone, you need to enter the account number and password. Enter the account number and password. It is recommended to use the primary dialing method, as the secondary dialing method obviously extends the dial-in time and increases the expenditure of mobile basic call charges.

Afterword: Since IP phone has quite a few differences with traditional phone, especially its call quality still has some defects, thus IP phone has a different market with traditional phone, but it is perfectly suitable for some consumer groups. Its low price has impressed many consumers, the price factor, profit margins and attract many operators want to invest in IP phones. And with the advancement of technology, IP telephony is likely to become a new economic growth point in China's telecommunications industry and even the national communications industry!