VOIP:

Strengths: there are many strength when using Voice Over Internet Protocol. For instance I suspect for most people who have relatives abroad it is a good easy and its usually free way to stay in contact with them without running up a huge and unnecessary phone bill. Voice Over Internet Protocol also allows you to speak to your friend or relative for as long as you wish without charging you anything at all. 

Weaknesses: as well as having many strengths do come a few weaknesses as well. As you are communicating over the Internet when using a Voice Over Internet Protocol, there could be some interruption because of bad connection, and if there is too much interruption with your connections you may loose your connection or may not even be able to connect at all.

Practicalities: Voice Over Internet Protocol is a very practical way to stay in touch with friend, family or even a business associate, as long as you both good connections with each other its just like being on a phone just usually with no cost depending on which site or format of VoIP you use.

Usefulness: Voice Over Internet Protocol is a very useful to communicate with other people, for example if your friends phone is turned off or engaged you can send messages through your VoIP site or programme you use to speak to people online to let them no you want to talk to them. Obviously its not as useful as a mobile phone as a use of communication whilst on the move or out, although Voice Over Internet Protocol Is good whilst at home so you could never really see it converting from normal calls to VoIP at least not for now anyway.

Public and business usefulness: Voice Over Internet Protocol is very well used now all over the world more than you might think. It may not be used extremely well through online applications such as Skype, but it is used astronomically over online gaming and Xbox 360 have made a very successful business through this. Xbox charge £39.99 for Xbox live for one year, which primarily allows you to play and speak to other people online and even speaking online in groups of people not just one to one. Billions of people have used and still use Xbox live at this £39.99 charge, which has created a very viable business for Microsoft.

You can also see Businesses using Voice Over Internet Protocol when speaking to business associates abroad or even just to discuss business deals through programmes like Skype to save on the price on calls, which can go back into the business.      

What we achieved last week:

last week was our first lesson with Rhys and we started with a powerpoint explaining what the course is about and what will be doing this year.

we also created our Blogger account if that wasn't obvious to you, as i am writing on it.  

after we designed and created our Blogger accounts, we researched all the DCP'S and had to find their definition and what they do.

DCP'S

HTTP: hypertext transfer protocol: a protocol (utilizing TCP) to transfer hypertext requests and information between servers and browsers. HTTP is a protocol based on HTTP. It is intended to improve page and object retrieval performance when web servers suffer server side congestion. Examples of server side congestion include the Shoemaker-Levy, Slashdot and flash-crowd effects.

WAP: Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) is an open international standard for application-layer network communications in a wireless-communication environment. Most use of WAP involves accessing the mobile web from a mobile phone or from a PDA.

GSM: Global System for Mobile Communication. A network which generally covers a fairly broad geographic area and which offers customized travel, financial, reference and commercial information to smart-phone subscribers.

3G: The Third Generation wireless digital standard for high-speed voice and data networks with maximum transmission rates rated at millions of bits per second (Mbps);

MMS: MMS is a service developed jointly together with 3GPP, allows users to combine sounds with images and text when sending messages, much like the text-only SMS.

GPRS: General packet radio service (GPRS) is a packet oriented mobile data service available to users of the 2G cellular communication systems global system for mobile communications (GSM), as well as in the 3G systems. In 2G systems, GPRS provides data rates of 56-114 kbit/s.

BLUETOOTH: Bluetooth is a proprietary open wireless protocol for exchanging data over short distances (using short length radio waves) from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks (PANs). It was originally conceived as a wireless alternative to RS-232 data cables

ADSL: Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) is one form of the Digital Subscriber Line technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide

BROADBAND: a term used to describe a network that can transmit a wide range of signals, including audio and video. Broadband networks are especially useful in the Networked World, as they can carry many signals at once, resulting in faster data transmission.

VOIP: Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a general term for a family of transmission technologies for delivery of voice communications over IP networks such as the Internet or other packet-switched networks.