Coverage includes—

• Jerri Ledford has been a freelance business technology writer for more than ten years. During that time, more than 700 of her articles, profiles, news stories, and reports have appeared online and in print. Her publishing credits include Intelligent Enterprise, Network World, Information Security Magazine, DCM Magazine, CRM Magazine, and IT Manager's Journal.

• A comprehensive guide to free or low-cost telephone service using Internet technologies.

• Suitable for all consumers interested in using this technology.

• Serves as a useful guide to the purchase and setup of Internet phones and the broadband Internet services required to support them.

• Written for consumers in simple language and in a hands-on, step-by-step sequence to help readers install and use their Internet phone service.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 3 Ratings

Good Introduction to What's Coming - 2005-11-05
Reviewer Rating:
The basic technology of the conventional telephone system has been around since the very beginning. You make a call and you get a dedicated communications channel to the instrument at the other end. And in the beginning that was indeed a physical wire. This wiring circuit was physically switched to your phone and stayed there until you hung up. Later Bell Labs was set up to discover how to get more signals through a wire than just one message at a time. Everyone knew that you could get more signal through a wire than just one phone call. And running all that wire was expensive, especially when it ran underwater across the Atlantic.

Step forward a few decades. The internet isn't circuit switched like this. Instead it's packet switched. A packet of data has it's own address as to where it's supposed to go and is thrown up on the network. It makes its way to the intended receiver. That's the way this message got to you. Suppose instead that that packet was a little tidbit of digitized voice. With the proper instrument on the receiving end (let's call it a telephone) the data is converted back into voice.

That's what VOIP is all about. To learn the details, buy this book. It's a complete description of what it's all about from equipment, procedures, and a bit of the background technology.

Only one last comment -- keep at least one regular, old fashioned, hard wired (not cordless) telephone around. If you have a fire, that knocks the power out, you want something that will let you call 911.

good guide - 2006-01-10
Reviewer Rating:
If you have been contemplating VoIP but are fuzzy on the details, Ledford offers some insight. She walks you through a good general guide of what VoIP is, from a user's perspective, not an engineer's. You can see that VoIP offers a far richer feature set than Plain Old Telephone Service. Though the exact features in a given VoIP varies with its provider. At least for US readers, the book summarises who the main providers are and typically what each offers, and for how much.

Also, the book surveys VoIP equipment and which you might want to get.

Of course, Skype gets prominent mention, as the best known pure VoIP play.

A great guide for the voip newbie - 2008-07-31
Reviewer Rating:
This was a curiosity read and I found it to be a very good guide for understand the basics of voip.

Overall the book is not highly technical. If you are looking to get to the guts of voip, this is the wrong book.

If you are somebody considering voip and don't know anything about it, this is the book for you.

There is a little repetition on some topics as Ledford explains the different approaches. However, the information in this book is very good. You get discussions, a sit survey list and many links for further research.

I did check many of the topic links and the tutorials. However, I did find a few that no longer worked or had been taken over by spam groups(pages that offer information links rather then the needed site).

There are chapters for setup, running and improving your voip experience. The trouble shooting section is ok but rather basic. But that is expected for a book aimed at the consumer rather then an engineer.

Overall; a very good book for the beginner!

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