RFC 1789 (rfc1789) - Page 2 of 6
INETPhone: Telephone Services and Servers on Internet
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 1789 Telephone Service and Servers on Internet April 1995
part of the modern society. Recently, many software packages are
available, either commercially or as public free-ware, which supports
voice communication on Internet. Some of these products are targeted
directly as possible substitution for long distance telephone
services. However, so far, all such products only support voice
communications using a computer that is on the Internet or is
connected, via a SLIP link, to the Internet [4].
This RFC presents a true telephone service, called INETPhone, which
supports voice communication through the Internet. INETPhone
integrates the local phone network with the Internet. The phone
network provides local access of INETPhone service with the existing
telephone facilities, whereas the Internet delivers the packets of
voice communication over long distances. The service of INETPhone is
illustrated by the following scenario. Assuming a user at area A
wants to call another user in area B. The user first makes a local
call to an INETPhone server in area A. After the connection, the user
keys in the remote phone number in area B to the server. Then the
server in area A makes a connection to another INETPhone server in
area B, and requests the remote server to dial, as a local call, the
phone number in area B. Therefore, a long distance phone connection
between users in area A and B is established via two local phone
connections and one Internet connection between two INETPhone
servers.
The INETPhone provides a general service of voice communication on
Internet compatible to the existing telephone service. The
motivation in developing and experimenting the INETPhone service can
be two-folds: on the one hand, a general telephone service on the
Internet will be a major step towards integrated services on Internet
and a great challenge to the future development of Internet
infrastructure and protocol architecture; on the other hand, the
entire Internet community can take the advantage from the cheap and
convenient voice communication of the INETPhone service.
2. Design Philosophy
The design philosophy of the INETPhone differs from the most of
current voice communication services on Internet in three basic
aspects: integrating the existing telephone networks with the
Internet; using the INETPhone servers to carry out the task of voice
packet delivery on Internet; and an open-partnership of establishing
the INETPhone service on Internet. The discussion of each of these
aspects is given as follows.
The conventional telephone service is the most popular and convenient
means for voice communication across distances. Any serious effort to
integrate voice communication on the Internet should take the full
Yang