John B Mayall asked:


Communication forms an important part of any business today. So, every business is now keeping itself totally equipped with the latest communication tools like the internet, in order to keep in touch with the clients and business associates and to keep abreast of the competition. The internet is used for a variety of purposes such as customer care and technical support by the business organizations.

One great utility of the internet that has now emerged as a great communication tool is the Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP. Several businesses and even common people are switching over from using the regular telephone to using VoIP for business purposes as well as in homes.

One reason why this transformation is occurring is the cost factor. VoIP has enabled users to make calls to other people at very cheap rates and even for free. It also has a lot of additional features that are not usually available while using the regular telephone. VoIP uses the internet to make and receive calls. The system works by converting the analog audio signals to digital format which gets transmitted on the internet and reconverted at the other end to be heard by the receiver.

There are many features present while using VoIP that is not found with the conventional landline. These include features like answering machine, audio and video conferencing, caller ID, three-way calling, etc. The basic package offered by various VoIP service providers can be utilized free of cost. This goes to say that all you need to do is have a fast internet connection, subscribe with some provider and you are ready to make calls. The other basic infrastructure you need is an internet phone and a computer.

While some providers will themselves be able to provide the internet phone others provide software that enables the computer to be utilized like the telephone.

The advantages to the VoIP system do not end here. If the users at both the ends have subscription with the same service provider, the parties can make and receive calls for free wherever they are. Since the internet is being used for transmission of all the calls, even calls to regular telephones, cell phones, and phone services provided by different VoIP service provider are also quite economical.

If a person has Wi-Fi enabled in his/ her home, they can make use of wireless VoIP that necessitates a Wi-Fi phone. If the person has Wi-Fi connectivity in a broader area, the Wi-Fi phone can be used like a cell phone in the areas where the connectivity is available.

Wi-Fi phones are gaining popularity with people using VoIP for making calls. This is due to the freedom that these phones provide where the person will not need to be located in his / her home to make and receive calls through the VoIP mode. All they will need is to have an active Wi-Fi signal.

So, if you have Wi-Fi connectivity to the internet in the area where you live, you too can opt for a wireless VoIP system. Having such a system will not only enable you to make and receive calls without having to be stationed in one place, it will be cheaper than using your mobile phone for calling.

Wi-Fi is a great technological advance available and VoIP is effectively using this to its benefit to enable users of this system to make and receive calls very easily.

To utilize all features provided, it is best to confer with your other contacts to know which Wi-Fi VoIP service provider they are subscribing with. This will enable you to make and receive calls to your near and dear ones in addition to your business associates and clients totally free of cost. You can make maximum utilization of the services provided as most of your contacts have opted to use the service provider that you have also subscribed with.

Several additional features provided with VoIP system is available to the users free of cost but will cost extra if a regular landline phone is being used. So, if you too want to get these features for free, go in for VoIP.

You will be able to save a lot in your monthly bills if you frequently make overseas calls. VoIP will give you freedom from watching the time elapsed while making long distance calls as these calls through VoIP is quite cheap and you can talk to your hearts content.

David Mutlow asked:


Internet access whilst travelling in Greece has improved dramatically.

Returning from a recent trip with ‘Peter Sommer Travels’ to the eastern Aegean. I made a point of researching cheap and effective ways of maintaining reliable Internet access whilst on the move. In my previous post g3 Mobile Internet Access with Wind. I’d researched an effective pay-as-you-go method of using Mobile broadband in Greece.

There were some down sides namely the initial cost of buying a ‘Wind’ mobile broadband stick at €90 however its frequently recommended by their staff to use an unlocked broadband stick and use their pay-as-you-go cards that can be found in most shops.

In reality if you don’t have an unlocked mobile broadband stick the cost of the ‘Wind’ stick is not only expensive it’s not always easy to get hold of outside Athens. Walking into their local shop in Vathi (Capital of Samos Island) I was informed that it would have to be ordered from Athens and would take a couple of days.

Currently ‘Wind’ is the only pay-as-you-go mobile broadband service in Greece without a contract. Walking three doors down to the Vodafone.gr shop around the corner I was offered the same service with a €66 charge for the stick with a 2 year contract. At the ‘Prova Café Bar’ yards away from both shops, they have Wi-Fi Internet access for €2.50 per hour (Using a Wi-Fi code) there are no banks of computers out the back as you’re expected to bring your own. Looking around I could see I was not alone using my Laptop.

Returning to Pythagorea by taxi €14 my driver was a fountain of knowledge, every Modern Greek is a techno geek apparently. The government in Greece are implementing public Wi-Fi hotspots in every town; the local government on the island need only implement this free Wi-Fi program. According to the taxi driver, ‘Connex’ are the current service provider for the nationwide scheme and the default Wi-Fi code to log on is 1234567890-123 or 4 I never got the opportunity to test this myself so I’d welcome any input from others.

During my trip visiting the Islands of Samos, Patmos, Leros, Kos and eventually Bodrum on the Turkish coast. I was able to pick up 4 -5 Wi-Fi signals from our Gullet within every harbour. Many were labelled with a bars name that could be found with ease. It’s only a matter of selecting a bar paying the €2.50 minimum charge and reading your emails at leisure.

Finding myself without full-time Internet access left me with time to explore and reduce my tendency to surf. I found myself considerably reassured that there was reliable Internet access on the move as long as I had my own Laptop. The down side is the reliable Wi-Fi access is only available where you find competing bars for your service.

3G does have its advantages with its much broader internet coverage than Wi-Fi hotspots so a combined use of both services will provide maximum possible coverage in Greece.

Julia Hall asked:


The Internet provides a great number of opportunities for entertainment, connecting with

friends and business associates, getting an education, tracking investments, and finding

great deals while shopping. With all of these advantages, you probably want to have a

high speed Internet connection in your home if you don’t have one there already. While

upgrading from dial up is a good thing to do, you’re probably kind of confused by the

options that you have available to you. This is understandable with all of the different

technologies and the companies that are offering them that you have to choose from.

If you’re fortunate enough to have access to cable TV, then you’re also probably

fortunate enough to be able to get an Internet connection that’s delivered over that same

broad band digital cable technology. Granted that if you have access to cable Internet,

then you also probably have access to DSL, satellite, and possibly some kind of

municipal WiFi Internet as well, but there are still a lot of reasons to consider broad band

cable.

The first advantage that broad band cable has over other forms of broad band Internet

technology is speed. With the possible exception of muni WiFi, broad band cable high

speed Internet has the largest bandwidths with download speeds that vary from six to

twelve megabytes per second, depending on the level of service that’s been subscribed

to and whether or not the special Power Boost feature (which increases the baseline

download speed by fifty percent for larger downloads) has kicked in. Both satellite

Internet and DSL have bandwidths that are stuck around three megabytes per second

and often quite lower, depending on where you live and how much you’re willing to pay.

Getting your Internet connection over a cable also provides a greater level of security

than any kind of WiFi. In fact, there are even people who look for WiFi connections so

that they can see what’s being transmitted- in effect spying on what WiFi users are

looking at. Since there isn’t a good way to make muni WiFi service secure, this is a very

real danger. It’s also theoretically possible to spy on satellite Internet signals as well.

Naturally, since DSL is transmitted over phone lines, it has a similar level of security to

broad band digital cable Internet connection, but there are many other ways in which an

Internet connection based on digital cable technology is superior. The fact that cables

are a lot beefier than phone lines means that the signal that can be sent over them is a

lot faster and more reliable. After all, skinny phone lines are subject to a lot more

interference than coaxial cables and that interference can really slow things down.

All of the extra speed and reliability and security that you can get from a broad band

cable Internet connection such as Comcast’s translates into a level of Internet

performance that you’ve probably only experienced in libraries, coffee shops, or at work

up to this point.

The Internet is an increasingly vital part of everyday life and this technology can help

you make the most of it.

Jhoana Cooper asked:


Running a network isn’t easy, and it’s doubly hard when your network runs on WIFI. It’s easier to connect to and hack a system whose signal easily wanders off the physical vicinity. You might have a WIFI network set up at home, but unless you’ve had the set up figured out to an exact science, some signal is bound to cross your neighbor’s house. If this is the case, they could easily access your computers and get files and bandwidth from your network. To avoid network *********** such as this one, you can use a WEP ***** system and spam filters.

WEP ***** System

Let’s face it, a WIFI network is convenient because it allows you to be mobile, set up computers anywhere in the building, and communicate with other computers in the network at your own free will. However, when everything’s accessible via your router, and you haven’t fenced in your network well enough, you’re bound to run into one problem or the other.

For example, anyone scouting the perimeters of your building can freely access your network with a laptop or a cellphone if you don’t allow block points in your network set up. These outsiders can also take advantage of the “free WIFI” (which you’re actually paying for) if you don’t protect your network with a WEP ***** system.  

A WEP ***** system allows you to keep track of all the IP addresses of computers who are accessing your system files. You can also use this device to set up password walls so that only authorized personnel are able to access your internet connection. When you set up a WEP ***** system in your network, you’re also essentially saving up on crash down repairs and viral damages. With the way the internet is designed these days, it’s so easy for your network to get infiltrated by hackers and phishers simply because you forgot to protect it sufficiently.

Spam filters

Aside from external protection, your network also needs to filter harmful action queues initiated by the very computers who belong to it. Let’s face it, in an office, or eve at home, you can’t have a full control over what other people are visiting once they’re online. Unfortunately, most websites online have harmful content. These could be the websites that your daughter visits to download music, or a website that a colleague is secretly browsing for adult content.

The only way you can protect your network from harmful elements online is by installing spam filters. These spam filters block harmful URLs from all browsers belonging to the network. They also prevent actions which may be potentially harmful to the system from being completed. You’ll find this useful when someone in your home or office is using one of the computers in your network, and s/he isn’t very familiar with forms of viruses that are found on the internet.

Your spam filters can also block out websites which have indecent content. This is very useful if you’re setting up a network for school or home use. You won’t have to worry about your kids or students downloading content they’re not supposed to see yet.

Christy Myers asked:


Wifi main role is to provide the connectivity amongst various types of communities. It is one of the good, cheapest and consistent tools of communication in the USA. There are many wifi service providers are in operation in USA. Selection of Wifi depends on the services and your configuration.

1. The first priority of the using the wifi is the connectivity and the transfer and clarity of the data and voice systems. The Wifi technology is different from the conventional communication system. It is connected through Internet broadband connection and special types of hardware like antenna, adaptor are used to run the system. The clarity varies depends on your Hardware and hotspot locations. The wireless Internet consists of Antenna, laptop of palm top and window CE equipment. The wireless Internet refers as wireless fidelity (WiFi), especially in name wifi in hotspot.

2. The second criteria for the selection of Wifi system are prices. It varies from company to company and from plan to plan in each company. You must have to see from your angle which plans are better and most suitable to you.

3. The third most important considerations while selecting the Wifi services is it must be secured. You need to take adequate safety measures to get your system and access system secured from the hackers.

4. Please make it confirm that your office, home or other access points using the Wireless Equivalent Privacy (WEP), which encrypt your wifi traffic. The encryption, which cover your data to fight to enter a crawling and the undecipherable code.

5. It is essential to get in touch with the customer care departments if you find any additional amount in your bill.

Selection of right kind of Wifi services through which you can get easily connected at any distance.

Gena Franseca asked:


As the owner of a restaurant, coffee shop, hotel, or any business where offering Internet access to your customers is either expected or might offer you a competitive advantage, you have important decisions to make.

One of the first considerations is whether to charge for Internet access, or make it available for free. If you opt for a paid service, ensure that you invest in a software package that fully supports hotspot billing. You need a product which has the capability of accepting credit cards (and possibly other forms of payment), can redirect users to an access login page, track time and usage, generate receipts and offer comprehensive reporting capabilities.

There are other factors to consider, regardless of whether your Internet access will be a paid service or provided at no charge. There’s the issue of bandwidth for one. Most operators of Internet hotspots quickly discover that users will eat up as much bandwidth as you make available to them, and this can result in considerable Internet surcharges for your business. A good hotspot management package will give you control over bandwidth use with options to establish upload or download limits and even speed of access; not only for all users logging in to your network, but by individual users if needed. This gives you the option of setting up tiered access, so you could make limited web surfing free for all customers, but charge a fee for premium access. This class of management tool also offers you the protection of tracking web sites accessed by customers and blocking sites you don’t wish them to visit; you may not want your customers to have the ability to openly browse **** or ***** sites, for example. You can even designate certain websites as being freely accessible for all customers, using these free sites to deliver advertising or promotions.

The right software makes all the difference in making WiFi access work for your business.

Finley Bradfield asked:


With the advent of incredibly cheap card manufacture, mostly driven by the credit card industry, there are a wide number of Internet companies who are now offering low cost access to the Internet. Using access cards which are purchased at the area where the Internet access is offered or alternatively for use in a chain of shops or restaurants, these access cards provide a unique access code for a particular internet service provider and generally have a long series of letters and numbers which are uncovered when the user buys the card.

Pay as you go is not a new concept – the mobile phone companies have been using this payment structure for years. With a mobile phone, the customer buys a pre-paid card which contains a certain number of mobile phone “talk” minutes, and when those minutes are used up another card must be purchased. The same system is used for pay as you go internet access cards. Typically a user can either pay for unlimited access for a period of time, for example a day, a week or a month. The other method, which is actually less common in these days of high bandwidth internet access, is to pay as you go for the data amount. This second method is still used by the internet over mobile phone industry because the bandwidth of the connection is still limited by the technology.

Mobile internet is often used by business people who are on the move regularly, such as sales people and executives. These business men and women often use the internet while they are waiting at motorway service stations, and therefore a busy industry has grown up to sell access cards to the travelling business man – there are a number of well known companies who offer internet hot spots in public areas. Generally you must purchase the specific access card for the hot spot where you are located at that time. It is only because of the cheap availability of access cards, the high availability of high bandwidth internet, and more recently the widespread acceptance of WiFi internet, a wireless way to connect laptop computers to a hot spot, that the use of the internet on the go has grown.

Another growth area has been Internet in hotel rooms. In the past, this was provided by a wired internet system installed into the hotel when the building was built. The use of this network could be carefully monitored and could be charged, often at a premium, as part of the room charge. Because of the now widespread use of laptops, many hotels have now switched to a smart card wireless approach to their networks, even older hotel buildings can now offer the Internet to their residents.

Typically, one wireless router is used for ten to fifteen rooms, dependant on the layout and construction of the building. Wireless access smart cards are then purchased by the residents, allowing them the relative luxury of using their WiFi enabled computers throughout the whole hotel complex. It is common these days to see business people surfing the net over breakfast or relaxing in the lounge with their laptop.

Another huge advantage with smart card internet in hotels is for those hotels who offer conference facilities. Using a smart card system means that both exhibitors and visitors to a conference can very simply get access to the Internet, and for technology conferences this is invaluable. The smart card technology is a very good money earner for the hotel or conference centre because often their access point is the only way that the attendees can get onto the net.