Salvatore Salamone
Corporations rely on their leased-line, private networks to cut their telecommunications charges by sending voice and data over these fixed-price-per-month circuits rather than over the public telephone network.
However, many companies can't reap the financial benefits of using leased lines because they don't have enough traffic to make them practical. And some companies save a fraction of the amount they could because they link large regional data centers but don't use dedicated lease lines to connect smaller regional offices.
Whatever the reason for not using leased lines, companies still pay phone charges every time someone in one site faxes or calls a person in another site.
Many companies already use the Internet to send data across the globe. Now companies are starting to u
se the Internet as a pseudoprivate backbone to carry fax and voice traffic between sites.
Helping things along in this area are new products from the Brooktrout Networks Group (Richardson, TX (214) 907-0885) and VocalTec (Northvale, NJ (201) 768-9400). Both companies already offered products that save telecommunications charges by running over private networks (see "Brooktrout Cuts the Cost of Internal Faxing," February BYTE). Their new offerings tap the Internet.
Brooktrout's IP/FaxRouter lets a company send a fax over the least expensive route: leased lines (when available), the Internet, or the public telephone network (
see the figure
), all the while retaining the simple-to-use interface of a common fax machine. The user simply dials the destination fax number, and the fax is transmitted over the least expensive link.
VocalTec's Internet Phone software uses three algorithms (one for compression, one that handles packets that arrive out of order, and one that smoo
thes out delivery based on Internet traffic loads) to let users hold phone conversations over the Internet. Each user requires a sound card, microphone (or telephone handset connected through the sound card) and a SLIP or PPP link into the Internet.
Phone conversations with Internet Phone are half-duplex, so only one person gets to speak at a time. The quality of the phone conversations is about that of a speaker phone, with some delays that make the conversations choppy. However, several users say this is acceptable, especially because they're saving the cost of a long distance phone call.
illustration_link (12 Kbytes)
Routing tables in Brooktrout's IP/FaxRouter find the least expensive link to send fax transmissions between corporate sites.
Companies Cut Phone Bills
