VoIP, however, does allow you to control the amount of bandwidth that you use, says Dow’s Duncan. "With ISDN you are limited to the number of lines that you have," he says. "With IP you can be flexible with your bandwidth and control the amount you deploy for data." Roopam Jain, a Frost & Sullivan analyst, agrees that the quality of service is better over IP, meaning a better picture and greater stability. IP video users can still communicate with ISDN video users, but that requires a gateway?something the IP user must usually provide.

Peer to Peer

While peer-to-peer technology is most commonly associated with teens downloading the latest ’NSync single, the technology does have the potential to eliminate some of the bandwidth challenges confronting companies that commonly stream audio or video. If, for example, a company makes a speech by its CEO available over the Internet via peer-to-peer technology, the technique could help eliminate the bandwidth clogs created by people downloading the stream directly from a webpage.

Radio Free Virgin, a Los Angeles-based online radio station run and owned by the media conglomerate Virgin Audio Holdings, is currently beta testing software that allows it to create peered networks on the fly. Radio Free Virgin has 46 stations with continuous streams, and it tested the peer-to-peer technology on one of its channels. CTO Brendon Cassidy says that between four and seven out of every 10 listeners ended up downloading the stream directly from another listener rather than the company’s server, saving the company 40 percent to 70 percent of its bandwidth costs.

Other peer-to-peer technologies such as instant messaging (including ICQ and AOL’s Instant Messenger) and collaborative tools from vendors such as Groove Networks and NextPage allow users to trade text messages or files directly without hosts. These technologies are potentially more cost-effective and efficient than traditional Web-based tools because they take advantage of the user’s computer to store data and use direct connections to avoid company servers. Of course, these benefits come at the cost of some control. The decentralized nature of peer to peer essentially means that there is no one point from which to monitor the network. Business-oriented vendors are starting to build management and reporting tools into their products.

A Final Word

All the aforementioned technologies can work, but each has quirks and kinks that need to be managed. Establishing a communications strategy, as opposed to letting employees adopt technologies at random, will help mitigate risks and control costs.