View source for Convergence of communications

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'''Convergence of communications''', in varying and unfortunately not yet standard phrasings, is the goal of having all types of human-to-computer and computer-to-computer communications '''converge onto''' (i.e., all run over) a common infrastructure using [[Internet Protocol version 4]] or [[Internet Protocol version 6]]. 

It is neither necessary, nor desirable from a security standpoint, that they all run over the public [[Internet]]. All of these services can be restricted to other than the Internet, such as [[intranet]]s or [[extranet]]s.

This definition of convergence does not attempt to standardize the applications themselves. Instead, it includes the technologies that enable application-specific communications to be transmitted over standard interfaces to information delivery systems using Internet Protocol, [[Session Initiation Protocol]], and similar protocols and interfaces.

*{{r|Data}}
**{{r|Directory service||*::}}
**{{r|Search engine||*::}}
**{{r|Email||*::}}
**{{r|File transfer||*::}}
**{{r|Transaction processing||*::}}
**{{r|World Wide Web||*::}}
**{{r|Virtual documents||*::}}
**{{r|Text messaging||*::}}

*{{r|Universal emergency telephone number system}}<ref name=NENA>{{citation
 | url = http://www.nena.org/
 | title = National Emergency Number Association}}</ref>
**{{r|911||*::}}

*{{r|Telemedicine}}

*{{r|Remote sensing}}
**{{r|Weather information||*::}}

*{{r|Multimedia}}
**{{r|IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)||*::}} <ref name=IMSdef>{{citation
 | url = http://www.imsforum.org/education
 | title = What is IMS?
 | author = IMS Forum}}</ref>

*{{r|Audio}}
**{{r|Broadcast radio||*::}}
**{{r|Pay-per-view audio content||*::}}
**{{r|Telephony||*::}}<ref name=AboutVoIP>{{citation
 | title = VoIP and Communications Convergence: What is Communications Convergence?
 | first = Nadeem | last = Unuth
 | journal = About.com
 | url = http://voip.about.com/od/notonlyvoice/a/CommConverge.htm
}}</ref>

*{{r|Television}}
**{{r|Commercial television||*::}}
**{{r|Pay-per-view television||*::}}

*{{r|Facsimile}}

*{{r|Telemetry}}
**{{r|System Control And Data Acquisition||*::}} SCADA, for any critical service, '''''never''''' should run over the public Internet

==References==
{{reflist|2}}