SIP phones
Last Saturday, my dad asked me to come back to his office to help out again. And as usual, I grumbled for about 10 minutes before pulling myself up off the couch and grudgingly going with him to his car. It would be another long day of tidying desks, filing mail, and sweeping the reception area. Meanwhile, all my friends would be having fun in the absolutely stunning weather outside, which it always was the days that I had to go in to my dad's office. Still, when I got there, it was a little more interesting than I expected. He had these new phones on each desk and they looked pretty cool. I thought he just replaced the phones, but it turns out they were SIP phones that used a completely different network. These phones actually carried the voice data through a VoIP (voice over internet protocol), which used his existing internet line. He loved it because it meant cheaper calls with his long distance clients and a consolidated monthly bill for all his communication needs. Plus, he used something he called a Microsoft fax, which I think is a type of network fax, over the VoIP as well, along with the SIP phones. I still didn't know what he was talking about, but it helped get my mind off things as I helped him around the office during a Saturday where the weather was gorgeous. I've heard of VoIP from my friends before, but I only thought of it as a cool way to get cheap long distance through one or two lines. I didn't know that my own dad used it to connect multiple phones and even run his network fax through it. It wasn't any different from his previous phone system. Earlier I had imagined VoIP to be some weird setup where you call people through a cheap microphone and headset connected to your computer. But these phones looked nice, they looked normal, and they could do all the same things that normal networked office phones could do. Needless to say, I was amazed. But it still didn't change the fact that I was cooped up in an office during a wonderful Saturday!