Technology is a wonderful thing when it works. For example, these days I call my parents on my iPhone using Skype. This works about 90% of the time. But when you sit back and think of what's actually happening when I do that, it's quite incredible. Example: Me calling my mom with Skype on iPhone.
- From my iPhone, The call goes through the wireless network here at work.
- The traffic goes through the network, ending up in Japan (my work's outbound gateway)
- The traffic then goes over the Internet, through one of the cables connecting North America to Japan
- From there it's routed through to Skype's servers somewhere in the continental US.
- Skype's servers route the traffic internally to a server that's local to my mom's Long Island area code
- That server makes a phone call to my mom's home line, connecting us.
So using 3 different connection technologies (wireless, wired and phone) over at LEAST 2 major fiber cables undersea, through the entirety of the US to the New York phone system so that I can chat with mom. And somehow they manage to deal with all the variability built into each of those networks, to give us a conversation with less delay than I remember having the first time I called my mom out of country.
Of course, occasionally this wonderful world of technology stuffs up, like today when I was trying to wish Bruce a happy birthday, but generally, it's pretty fantastic.
Oh and all this essentially free, riding on existing services I already pay for.
