Streamyx

In an enterprise environment, voice and video over IP (VoIP) significantly reduces long distance telephone charges by transferring all long-distance voice data over the Internet connection. It also provides a means for rich multimedia applications converging video, voice and data in a single session. Since VoIP shares the Internet connection with other forms of traffic, it must compete with other applications for network bandwidth. In order to make VoIP a viable business application for this scenario, the quality of VoIP should be equal to the traditional PSTN/ISDN voice and video services.

A typical corporate network environment carries a broad mix of data traffic with different bandwidth needs. Bursty data applications, such as email and the web, have variable and unpredictable bandwidth requirements while streaming real-time applications such as voice and video demand consistent bandwidth allocation and minimal delays. While a 250 millisecond delay in an email or a Web page will probably not be noticed, a similar delay in a VoIP phone conversation or video conference would make conversation uneasy and cause callers to talk over each other.

Streaming applications like VoIP and videoconferencing require performance guarantees to ensure that they do not suffer from bandwidth contention from less critical applications and Internet traffic (e.g., non-critical Web browsing, large FTP file transfers, and P2P uploading/downloading of digital music files). A policy based quality of service (QoS) solution can ensure that your voice and video applications receive the bandwidth they require.

So what's the solution??

First....ensure your network is optimized for sufficent bandwidth....with room for expansion when/if necessary. For businesses with frequent multimedia applications such as videoconferencing....a minimum of DS3 Bandwidth is necessary. Perhaps OC3 for large companies with extensive multimedia load pressures on their network.

Second....allocate your network resources based on business priorities. A commercially available monitoring device will help you monitor and manage network and application performance. This allows you to prioritize traffic traveling over your WAN/Internet connection and guarantee bandwidth for timing-critical, real-time applications like VoIP and videoconferencing. Through such a device specific voice, video and multimedia traffic flows can be identified and the following actions can be assigned: minimum and maximum bandwidth; priorities; guaranteed rate (CBR); fairness; and control over the number of sessions allowed through the network.

Take control of your Internet and WAN resources to optimize the performance of your business-critical applications, VoIP and video traffic. Ensure sufficient bandwidth in your network for near term and expansion needs....and implement a monitoring system to manage the daily operations and priorities.

That's simply smart business.

Michael is the owner of FreedomFire Communications....including DS3-Bandwidth.com and Business-VoIP-Solution.com. Michael also authors Broadband Nation where you're always welcome to drop in and catch up on the latest BroadBand news, tips, insights, and ramblings for the masses.

I have written a review on Cornwall but it is not just about St. Ives.

I went there for a week with the family and stayed in a two bedroom bungalow. My children loved it. We booked it with a travel agent and went in the month of August. The weather was not too good, but the main thing was that it did not rain.

We drove there and it took about 5 hours to get there. It is a good idea to stop for breaks on the way if you have children in the car because they will get bored.

We visited Penzance and Land's End and many other places.

The beaches were beautiful, but the weather wasn't too good, although it did not rain. It was just windy and cold.

St. Ives is a lovely town. There are many coves there. The scenery will take anyone's breath away. Drive around visiting many great areas of St. Ives. There are cliff spots where you can stop and take many pictures. If you are an artist, then this town can give you the painting that you are looking for.

At the end of our week we went to St. Ives harbour and sat there eating ice cream. The sun had come out at last so we decided to drive around and see a few other beaches. There were some beautiful views as we drove around. The harbour was extended to its current length at the end of the eighteenth century. The three arches in the pier were added to allow sand to be flushed out of the harbour. St. Ives is famous also for the Tate Gallery.

We enjoyed it here and would definitely go back again.

Broadband has become essential for most of us. The simple click of a button has brought us many things that were just not possible before, from entertainment - music and videos - to shopping for almost anything. The majority of us use it daily, sometimes without even knowing why we logged on in the first place.

Fast access to the internet has also become an essential in education, from primary schools to universities, where you can retrieve lecture notes, previous exam papers even exam results, therefore reducing paper waste and speeding up the whole process of preparation.

One of the only downsides is that it has made us less active in an office environment. It is often said that since the introduction of the internet, and especially broadband, people have become lazier in work.

We no longer have to walk across an office to speak to someone, as the opportunity to send a quick email seems more appealing. This may not seem like much, but if you take into consideration the amount of emails you may send a day, it can add up.

Back to the positives: broadband truly has helped the world connect in many different ways. Social networks are popping up all the time, bringing the original pen friend to an end. It brings us more in touch with our neighbour countries, with a total of more than 1.2bn internet users by September 2007.

We can also find all the information we need with sites like Wikipedia. The site has more than 8m articles in 253 languages, highly impressive considering that it is a free service.

Since the introduction of broadband we have seen some big names emerge, most notably Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. These sites would just not be possible without broadband and have become some of the most popular sites available to users.

What would happen if it were possible to pull a plug and the internet suddenly disappeared? What would we do and how could we cope? A life without broadband or the internet seems almost ludicrous now and would cause a large portion of the world's economy to stop.

If you are interested in taking advantage of current broadband internet technology then you should compare many cheap broadband providers available in your area.