[Gllug] Data pots and optics

[Chris Bell]

On Sat 02 Jul, t.clarke wrote:
> 
> I do not understand why VOIP is such a big thing - apart from the cost saving
> aspect, which is surely only a matter of pricing policy. I seem to recall a
> guy at BT Martlesham predicting that with the amount of cheap fibre bandwidth
> becoming available in the world we would all be able to rent a telephone line
> for a fixed cost and phone anywhere for free, because bandwidth would be
> ridiculously cheap and the costs of the billing systems too high in comparison
> (or something along those lines!).  My limited understanding of current
> telephony is that the digitised analogue voice signals are carried in quite
> small 'packets' over some sort of time-multiplexed system such that once the
> route is established a dedicated amount of bandwidth is allocated to the call
> so that the digitised voice arrives at the other end nicely in sync with no
> 'jitter' or loss and relatively low latency.  This would not seem to be the
> case if IP is used to transport the data (bigger packets? - greater latency? -
> packet loss and jitter??).  Or am I missing something.  Some enlightenment
> from those with greater knowledge would be appreciated.
> 
> Tim

   The transmission speed down the line may still be below the speed of
light, but data handling rates have increased at the ends, so there is
probably no penalty with the current larger packets.

-- 
Chris Bell

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