Comment on Phones have unique phone numbers, why dont computers have unique computer-numbers?

• lemmyng@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Laptops don’t get a new IP address every time they switch from one AP to another in the same network either. Your cell phone will get a new IP address if it switches to a different cell network.

  source

  • jeffhykin@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I can get VOIP calls behind a NAT without cell service. I’m asking how is that possible. Is the router somehow part of the same AP as cell service?

    source

    • lemmyng@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Whoa, that’s a sizeable edit to the post! Regardless the answer is pretty straightforward: your VOIP client (either the device if you have one or the software) is connected to a VOIP service which acts like a gateway for your client. Since the client initiated the connection to the gateway and is keeping it alive, you don’t need to make any network changes. Once the connection is established, standard SIP call flows (you can Google that for flow diagrams) are followed.

      So no, you router is not part of the cell service. The VOIP provider is part of a phone service that receives calls and routes them for you, just like the cell towers are part of a telephony provider that routes calls through the appropriate tower.

      source

      • jeffhykin@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Finally :D thank you so much!

        So basically VOIP is “cheating” because its not actually handled by the network directly, the phone company pays for always-online servers, and phone(s) reach out to those server every time they change networks, in order to be able to route calls to them.

        Which also means! it is possible to do the same thing for computers, but it requires having

        1. A static IP
        2. An always online server
        3. The device needs a daemon that tries to connect to a always online server, and proves itself
        4. that server needs to manually reroute traffic (through a VPN or some other means) to the device, wherever it might be

        Which also explains why general network providers wouldn’t want to create the infrastructure to always keep track of discovering devices as they changed networks: not keeping track is less expensive. (And that’s on top of the legacy approach of local networks and desktops.

        Thats a sizable edit!

        Yeah 😅 I didnt want it to be this complicated, but I didnt see how else to explain that current addressing systems don’t meet the same need as a phone number.

        source

        • -> View More Comments
• SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Its not like I can write down the IP address of my friends laptop so I can send it a message once he gets to a new city.

  With static IPs that’s possible, but you already do that when you email them already.

  source
• JakenVeina@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Main difference there being that switching cities means probably switching ISPs. You can absolutely carry over your IP address when you move between the same provider, if that’s part of your service plan, and that may well happen with some ISPs even without it being part of your plan. There just isn’t really much of a need for people to carry a static IP, except for some businesses, and I’d say the main reason is that people don’t visit websites by memorizing and typing in an IP. They do memorize and type in phone numbers.

  source
• SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  [deleted]

  source

  • jeffhykin@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I can send a message to the IP address but AFAIK the message won’t get to him because he will alalmost certainly have a new address when he connects to the airport WiFi in the new city.

    source

    • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Static IP

      source

      • jeffhykin@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        AFAIK a static IP does not fix that. If I’m wrong, which is possible, I’d be very happy to find that out.

        source