The most popular internet application, electronic mail, is an excellent example of non-real time communication. An e-mail user sends a message that arrives, at some point in the future, on the recipient s desktop. This technology is used for publishing documents of multimedia information on the internet. As we ll see, the WWW is an essential component in the majority of internet applications for call centers. Although the WWW does not require real time communication support, the number of internet applications that do is increasing.
Internet telephony allows internet users to conduct voice conversations with one another.
Even though the quality of the voice conversation cannot compare to a phone call over the PSTN, the significant cost savings has made internet telephony increasingly popular. Real time communication over the internet doesn t end with voice communication. Internet users can also exchange data in real time. For example, a user could edit a Microsoft Word document while colleagues, located anywhere on the internet, view the document and the changes as they are made. Although real time communication over the internet is quite new, the technology is rapidly evolving and maturing.