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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Drew Williams who wrote (1727)	7/29/1998 7:29:00 PM
From: DenverTechie	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12823

Drew, the beauty of these switches is that they are very flexible. Your call could be a voice call from you computer in packets to the ISP, then branch off to the public switched network to any normal phone handset in the world as you describe. That's one way, and it requires gateway devices between the ISP and public switched network to operate. But the switch can be programmed to operate like an Ethernet switch where it takes your call and routes it to the Internet to go to another computer equipped with voice call capabilities. Or, you can make the call over a standard telephone POTS line, converted to IP packets at the ISP location, routed over either the Internet or private IP network. Now it gets tough, depending on what's at the other end of the line. If there is no programmable switch on the other end, it could go to a voice capable computer as is. It could be converted back to voice by the ISP at the other end, sent to the public switched network at the local access number and go to a standard telephone POTS line. It could continue on the ISP's network at the other end and be converted by a packet phone modem before going to the standard telephone. So as you see, there are many ways the switch can be used and the handled once one of these babies has been installed. Actually, it is hard to describe all the possible combinations to make calls using Internet, IP, and PSTN. Diagrams and schematics tell the different arrangements better and easier. Sorry if this went over the four year old level.. But we are talking about technologies and network architectures that can only be simplified just so much. Somewhere along the line, it does tend to get complicated.