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Video calling was available for a long time with messenger clients like Yahoo, MSN etc. But they only allowed one to one connection. What pure video calling software like Skype or Oovoo did was they allowed multiple people to do video call conference. The service is free upto some persons and then they charge a little fee for extra persons.

Video calling (video conference or videoteleconference) is a set of interactive telecommunication technologies which allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously. It has also been called ‘visual collaboration’ and is a type of groupware.

Ref: Wikipedia

Transmission of picture or video was initiated by ATT in the 1970s with your picture phone. In the second half of 1980s PictureTel Corp made the first made commercial video conferencing available. In the 1990s IP based video conferencing became possible which was more efficient. It was only in the last decade that we saw the real growth of videotelephony with free services from skype etc. Video calling has advanced to a great extent now with HD technology, echo cancelling technology etc.

Video conferencing is mainly used by corporates and offices all over the world and it is a lucrative business. Video conferencing services are provided by big companies like Tandberg of Cisco, Halo of HP, ATT, Verizon, Polycom etc. For consumer usage I suggest Skype, Oovoo, Logitech VID HD etc. Now a days with advancement in technology it is possible to make video call even on the mobile phone using 3G technology.

In many cases (mostly in wireless internet connection) when we are unable to connect to internet if we do Ipconfig in command prompt then we find an IP address in the range of 169.254.0.1 to 169.254.255.254. This set of address is Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA). It is enabled in all Windows operating System environment except Windows NT. When there is no internet connection available the DHCP server sets an address from this range.

To resolve it we can try the following steps:

1. Go to the command prompt. At the blinking cursor type: Ipconfig/release. Once this operation is over, type Ipconfig/renew.

2. Do a complete power cycle of modem/router and computer. First shut down the modem/router and then shut down the computer. Wait for 2 – 3 minutes and the re-start the modem/router. Once all the lights on the modem/router are stabilized then re-start the computer.

Note: After each step open command prompt and check if we get a normal address like 192.168.100.1. If yes, then open your browser (e.g Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox) and try to visit any website to check if we are able to connect to the internet.

If the above two steps do not resolve the issue, then we should follow the typical steps for internet connection troubleshooting.