Voice over IP and related technologies

¶ … breakthroughs in communication technology and in cultural history alike would occur with the mainstream application of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). This is the internet standard which is at the basis of email transfer over the internet. A 2007 article, culled from a broader text on internet technologies by Mehta, offers some concise historical and conceptual background on SMTP, tracing its roots to the earliest usage of the internet.

The article describes the inception of the transfer model which today governs how we communicate with one another online, drawing it to the first formal context in which the internet can be said to have existed. Referred to as ARPANET in the early 1970s, had transmissions had already begun to travel across its channels through an electronic messaging system whereby the data would first travel to a central mainframe server from the sender and would thereafter be forwarded to the recipient.

Interestingly, the article relates the fact that this mode of transmission existed for decades before coming into the hands of mainstream commercial users. To this extent, the article reports that "the ARPAnet originally was formed primarily to support military research on how to build networks that could withstand outages and continue to function properly in the event a single connection or location on the network was rendered out of commission." (Mehta, 3) the networking exploration would lead to the creation of the protocol which is primary to our capacity to email at all times without concern of a downed server.

This is an article of particular relevance to our course studies, concerned as it is with the evolution of a technology from specialized use to commercial viability. This transition and proliferation are conducive of the creation of something which, in its standardization, can be considered a protocol.

Mehta, a. (2007). The Internet for Radiology Practice. Springer: New York.

The development of voice over internet protocol occurred over the course of several decades, with the early attempts at communication via transfer protocol technologies venturing toward the innovation by merging the communicative opportunities of broadband internet and traditional telephony. An article from last year points to the continuing thrust forward with respect to the integration of technologies and sensory desires for the user, describing the inception of visual aspects into the protocol.

The 2007 article by Ding et al. is focused on the discourse, research and user-end needs which figured into the gradual integration of visual images indicating users status and allowing for the presentation of messaging. Based particularly upon the findings produced by a long-term observation of the patterns of usage for VOIP users, the study would produce a set of conclusions concerning the fashions of usage which have produced the integration of visualization into an already integrative protocol.

The article contends to "shed light on the factors that drive the use of visual enhancements to audio conferencing." (Ding et al., 1019) Among them, the article concludes that there is an impulse when using computer interface systems to be aided by the presence of visual information.