Wireless Home Networking - Index of

Chapter 13: Using Your Wireless Network for Phone Calls
• VoipYourLife (www.voipyourlife.com)
• Packet8 (www.packet8.com)
� Supplementary VoIP services (these services include both PC-to-PC
voice chat and inbound or outbound calling to regular phones):
• Skype (www.skype.com)
• Yahoo! Voice (voice.yahoo.com)
• AOL AIM Call Out (call.aim.com)
• Google Talk (talk.google.com)
• Gizmo Project (www.gizmoproject.com)
This is only a partial list — hundreds of VoIP providers are out there these
days. We chose the largest and most well-known providers, but you can find a
great list of providers at www.voipproviderslist.com. You can also find reviews
of VoIP providers and an online bandwidth/latency testing program that will
let you know how well your broadband connection can handle VoIP at the following
URL: www.voipreview.org.
Going Wireless with Your VoIP Service
Most VoIP services available today are focused on either conventional
phones (through a telephone adapter) or the PC (using a softphone client).
Nothing is wrong with these approaches — both have their place — but what
excites us is the ability to leverage the Wi-Fi network you’ve installed in your
home to carry your phone calls. With a Wi-Fi VoIP phone, you can make calls
from anywhere in your house, and you can also take your Wi-Fi phone with
you to work, to a friend’s house, on a business trip (using the Wi-Fi in your
hotel room), or even to a Wi-Fi hot spot (bring it along on your midday caffeine
refueling trip to the local café). With VoIP, it doesn’t matter where you
are. As long as you have a broadband connection, you can make and receive
calls as if you were home. (Even when you’re overseas, you can receive calls
on your home phone number, saving your friends and family expensive longdistance
charges.)
We know what you’re thinking: “Heck, I can bring my cell phone to any of those
places and make and receive calls, with or without a Wi-Fi access point and
broadband connection!” Well you sure can (and we never leave home without
our cell phones, of course), but VoIP can provide you with some significant
money savings (depending on your location). VoIP phone calls are usually a
fraction of the cost (per minute) of mobile phone calls, particularly when
you’re in a roaming environment with your mobile phone (for example,
when you’re out of the country). A big trend is to incorporate both a VoIP
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