January 1998

Internet Phone 5.0
VocalTec Communications, Ltd.
35 Industrial Parkway
Northvale, NJ 07647
Ph: 201-768-9400; Fx: 201-768-8893
E-mail: [email protected]Web site: www.vocaltec.com

Pricing: $49.95

VocalTec has helped drive every advance we’ve seen in Internet telephony. From Internet telephony’s infancy, when it was regarded as little more than a toy, to its maturation into a corporate tool, VocalTec has been among the first to deliver the crucial improvements. Now, with Internet Phone 5.0, VocalTec anticipates the next frontier: acceptance by the masses.

The first big improvement was in voice quality. That helped Internet telephony to draw the interest of business users. The next big improvement? Bringing Internet telephony to ordinary telephones, not just PCs. With the new release of Internet Phone, you can talk PC-to-phone as well as PC-toPC. (VocalTec also provides gateways that enable phone-to-phone communications over the Internet, but that’s another story.)

INSTALLATION/DOCUMENTATION
VocalTec made installing Internet Phone 5.0 very easy. When we called VocalTec, a company representative directed us to the VocalTec Web site, where we downloaded the software. VocalTec also provided a serial key (via e-mail) and a few IPS files. These files contained configuration/account information that let us connect to ITSPs (Internet Telephony Service Providers).

After we installed the main software, we double-clicked on the ISP files and set up the user and account information. These preliminaries occupied us for only a few minutes. Then, we contacted one of VocalTec’s ITSP partners, who responded by sending us an account number and a password. The Internet Phone 5.0 installation was complete. The installation was in no way impeded by our having neglected to read the documentation first. We do suppose, however, that VocalTec’s documentation could help users get more out of the product after they got it installed. The online documentation, for example, looked fine. (We read passages after we installed the product.) We did notice, however, that a few documents were inaccessible, but perhaps the error messages that appeared on our browser reflected an error on our side.

FEATURES

PC-to-Phone Communication: Users of Internet Phone 5.0 needn’t limit their calls to other people who happen to have the same software. And they needn’t limit their calls to other people who happen to have PCs connected to the Internet. In fact, users can place calls to any ordinary telephone, and they can do it while saving up to 95 percent off the cost of traditional long-distance calls.

• Internet Phone 5.0 lets users take advantage of direct online links to Internet telephony service providers (ITSPs). Through these links, users sign up for phone service. Thereafter, users simply enter ordinary phone numbers to place calls from their PCs.
• Community Browser: Serving as a virtual neighborhood in cyberspace, the Community Browser lets people meet and speak with others around the world with similar interests. Basically, the Community Browser adds voice communications to the chat room paradigm.
• ITU H.323 Support: Since it supports the international standard in audio and video communications over networks, Internet Phone lets users communicate with anyone who works with an H.323compliant application, such as Microsoft’s NetMeeting or Intel’s Video Phone.
• Live-Motion Video: If the person with whom you are speaking has a video camera, you will actually see them during your call. You need no additional hardware of your own to see them. Of course, you will need your own video camera if they are to see you.
• Advanced Phone Features: Internet Phone gives users the amenities of a full-featured phone. These include caller ID, call waiting, muting, blocking, and directory assistance.
• Audio Conferencing Support: With Internet Phone, up to 100 people can participate in an audio conference, provided the client software is used in conjunction with the VocalTec Conferencing Server.
• Whiteboarding: Users can share and edit documents, photos, and drawings with other users.
• Multitasking And Auto Accept Calls: Users can work while Internet Phone runs in the background.
• Full-Duplex Capabilities: Users can carry on real-time, twoway conversations with other Internet Phone users worldwide. (Internet Phone also supports halfduplex conversations.)
• Enhanced Audio and Video Quality: Internet Phone provides a larger video picture via faster frame delivery; it improves audio thanks to new packet loss reconstruction algorithms and better delay handling. Also, Internet Phone includes automatic voice activation, which optimizes voice transmission quality, maximizing the performance of each call.

OPERATIONAL TESTING
Setting Up
We were able to adjust various parameters in Internet Phone. First, we opted for full-duplex communications. Then, we elected to use speaker phone mode (Figure 18). More extensive adjustments of the audio configuration settings, helped Internet Phone adapt to our work conditions, whether they happened to be noisy or quiet. Other settings included automatic gain control and a feature that let us test our microphone and speakers.

Graphical User Interface
We’ve always been impressed by Internet Phone’s user-friendly interface. The current version is no exception. For example, dialing numbers couldn’t be easier. We were able to dial by entering the e-mail address, by entering the IP address, or by doubleclicking on a name within a chat room in the revamped Global Online Directory, that is, the Community Browser (Figure 19).

Community Browser
The Community Browser was extremely easy to use. It consists of two types of chat rooms, public and member. The chat rooms consist of ten main categories (General, Culture, Leisure, International, Computers, Music, Business, Romance, Games, and Kids), plus several subcategories within each main category.

PC-To-PC Functionality
The first thing we checked out was voice quality over the Internet. On some calls, the people with whom we spoke sounded as though they were next door (the quality was that good). On other calls, however, we felt as though we were connected to someone who was talking from Mars! Nonetheless, the quality was pretty good overall.

Next, we tried out a few features that matter only during PC-to-PC communication. For example, we connected to someone who was using NetMeeting and held a videoconference. (All this was possible because of VocalTec’s support for the H.323 standard.) The video we saw on our end was only fair, but everyone we called told us that we had the best frame rate they had ever seen! (Credit our great frame rate to the Kodak USB camera we were using.)

We also tested the whiteboarding and chat features, both of which worked very well. We really liked the Community Browser, which (as mentioned above) included many interest groups broken down into categories and subcategories.

PC-TO-PSTN FUNCTIONALITY
Our main interest was to test Internet Phone’s new PC-to-PSTN functionality, which allows you to make a call from your PC to a regular phone. We decided to dial our main office through one of VocalTec’s ITSPs. We simply used the drop-down box to select which ITSP we wanted, then we used the touch-tone keypad GUI on the screen to dial our main office. We connected to our auto attendant with no difficulties. The volume was a bit low, but we were able to boost the volume from Internet Phone’s GUI interface. Hiking the volume introduced some noise, but the sound quality was pretty good overall.

Now for the interesting part: would VocalTec’s software transmit the DTMF (dual tone multifrequency) signaling across the Internet? (Many Internet phone products use compression algorithms which compress audio streams to the point that a PBX or auto attendant cannot recognize the DTMF digits.) Well, VocalTec passed with flying colors. As we pressed the keys, we could hear the DTMF digits over our multimedia speakers while the digits were transmitted over the Internet. We suspect that the DTMF signals are still compressed, but that the Internet gateway detects these tones and then retransmits the correct tones to the remote end to ensure that tones are accurate. Either that, or just voice is compressed, and not the DTMF digits. But even uncompressed DTMF digits could be susceptible to packet loss or Internet congestion, either of which could complicate DTMF transmission. In any case, VocalTec’s Internet Phone performed flawlessly.

We pressed a few digits and transferred to a particular extension. One of our engineers picked up the phone, and we were able to hold a conversation. We did notice that the sound quality was actually better on the remote end (PSTN) than on the local, originating end (PC/computer). We had more static and echo. We assumed the static was caused by the computer, but we were a bit surprised at the echo, since we were using a headset which separates the microphone from the speakers. Could there have been some signal “leakage” between the microphone and speakers within the sound card itself? We doubted it. We had a lot of confidence in our hardware, which included a highquality sound card and a very good microphone on the local end (PC).

We decided to tinker with the volume settings for the microphone. We reduced the volume level, and that reduced the echo/feedback problems. Overall, the quality was good. So good, in fact, that we were emboldened to play a practical joke. All we needed was a friend (that is, a friend/victim) who had caller ID. We found one, and called him via an Internet gateway that was located in Virginia. So, our friend was treated to a display of a phone number and address from Virginia. We told him we went to UVA to see a college basketball game, and he fell for it. Ah, the great tricks you can do with CTI!

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
We would like to see:

• Expanded recording capability: Specifically, we’d like to record conversations to WAV files.
• Continued improvement in voice quality: This item applies to Internet telephony products in general. All of them could benefit from better compression and faster Internet pipes. We hasten to add, however, that Internet telephony is usable now, and there’s no reason for potential users to delay trial. Of course, a high-speed connection to the Internet or a leased Intranet line is a big plus, but even a 28.8K modem provides adequate quality.
• Application sharing capability: Although Microsoft NetMeeting and Internet Phone already compete in many areas, we would like Internet Phone to have application sharing capability of the sort demonstrated by NetMeeting. VocalTec could add this capability to Internet Phone by using Microsoft NetMeeting’s SDK or by developing their own API.

CONCLUSION
VocalTec has a true winner on it’s hands with Internet Phone 5.0. It features one of the best GUIs we’ve seen in a long time, an exceptional feature list, and support for the latest open standards in Internet and computer telephony. We’d like to go a little further and point out that Internet Phone reflects VocalTec’s consistent leadership in Internet telephony. VocalTec’s innovations helped the industry take Internet telephony from high-tech toy to corporate tool, and it now anticipates the future, where Internet telephony will be a convenience enjoyed by the masses.