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TELINET VOIP - GLOSSARY
TECHNOLOGY EXPLAINED
The pace of communications change is accelerating;it has been accelerating, at an ever-increasing rate, since telecom liberalisation in 1984.
The development of Internet Protocol is the technological response to the demand for a fully converged transmission medium.
Mitel has been a leader in this technology since 1999. In October 1999 Mitel launched the World’s first fully-featured IPBX - Ipera 2000 - and the World of the future became the world of the present.
Many, probably most, projects utilising the Internet Protocol language have no connection, physical or conceptual, with the Internet.
So, from here on we shall use ‘IP’ to denote the protocol.
In simple language, IP is a carrier medium that segments the data stream in small ‘packages’, relying upon software capability at the point of delivery to ‘reassemble’ the data
stream into it’s original format. The efficiency of this particular language made it attractive to the data market and it gradually achieved dominance in that field.
At the same time, let us say over the last ten years, the market drives in voice comms have increasingly focused on convergence.
Convergence, the ability to leverage voice in data applications, has proceeded apace, and the tools to enable it’s development, ISDN, DPNSS, TAPI, QSIG,TSAPI etc., have all played their part.
It is true to say that, for larger enterprises, convergence already provides business-efficiency applications via bespoke software. However, for the majority of the market, the SME sector, such applications have been beyond financial reach, until now!
PACKETISED DATA EXPLAINED
The packet transmission concept is highly suitable for
data and voice convergence, indeed, within the protocol,
there is no difference between voice and other forms
of data. The market therefore needed one of the
competing protocols to be the ‘winner’, and thus justify
the huge expense of hardware development that
convergence demands. With the huge and growing
success of the web, what more suitable candidate
existed for protocol ‘champion’ than IP.
Thus IP became the protocol of choice and the one that
attracted the development dollars of the PBX industry
and Voice over Internet Protocol, VoIP, was born.
Of course there were many technical problems to
overcome, but market demand creates solutions and,
one by one, resolutions have been introduced.
The most pressing of these issues was, and remains,
what the industry has termed, Quality of Service, QoS.
In layman’s language, packetised data relies upon the
data stream being re-assembled at the point of delivery.
If your e-mail or your circuit diagram arrives with a slight
delay inbuilt, you remain quite satisfied; indeed you are
unaware of that delay. The same cannot be said for voice.
Build delay into voice delivery and you will lose caller
credibility at best, and court outright market rejection
of the concept at worst.
Thus QoS, the absolute assurance that voice packets
will take priority, became the talisman for success of VoIP.
To say that the matter has been wholly resolved would
be a slight exaggeration, but without doubt the QoS
resolution employed by the World’s leading PBX
manufacturers has reached well beyond the point
of market acceptance. Thus VoIP is now a reality,
a deliverable that provides further impetus to the drive
for convergence.
For more information on VoIP, or to book your free telephony audit contact Telinet, or leave your details and Telinet will contact you.
VOICE Vs. IT SUPPLIER?
The introduction of VoIP has brought voice within
the ambit of the data world, indeed many VoIP servers
will sit on the LAN/WAN and become, effectively, simply
another application. This has encouraged datacomms
players to enter the IPBX market with products that,
whilst most are technically competent, ignore completely
the call-handling and voice-quality issues that are
fundamental to modern concepts of telephony.
Thus the ‘traditional’ PBX manufacturers, with years
of experience in voice transmission, albeit using TDM
technology, are uniquely and strategically placed to bring
VoIP to customer premises equipment. This is the winning
technology of this decade. Ignore it at your peril.
THE MOBILITY ISSUE
The market has long demanded the mobility of telephony
both within the premises and around the branch network.
VoIP provides a part of this solution in that the IP set will
register its presence, via its IP address, wherever it is
plugged into the LAN/WAN network.
However, this does not answer the demand for mobility
within the premises and for this we need to look
to wireless technology.
DECT and Bluetooth have their adherents but,
undoubtedly, the winning solution has to be wireless LAN
technology with VoIP fully integrated. Mitel has such
a solution for its customers and can, today, provide
a full wireless LAN/WAN solution with VoIP integration.
There are several manufacturers offering wireless LAN
technology for IT solutions, but very few have gone
the added mile of integrating a voice solution.
Once the integration has been done, then, effectively
the LAN and the telephony are working on the same
wireless network. Both services are fully integrated
and provide the full IP bandwidth for solutions building.
For more information on VoIP, or to book your free telephony audit contact Telinet, or leave your details and Telinet will contact you.
MITEL ‘OFFICE-IN-A-BOX’ CONCEPT
Supporting the concept that VoIP is a technology that
empowers even the smallest of businesses, Mitel has
produced the first true ‘Office-in-a-Box’ product. MN3100
Integrated Communications Platform, is the smaller
of the two core platforms from Mitel and is cost-efficient
from five desktops upward.
MN3100 ICP is, in fact, a layer-3 data switch delivering an
Ethernet switched LAN at 10/100 speed to as many
as 54 RJ45 ports.
The new and exciting development with this product
is that it doesn’t stop at switching data; indeed it is
combined with Mitel’s renowned call control capability
and is also a full PBX.
Plug either a phone or a PC into the network and
the system uses the IP Address to determine the product
type. Mitel’s phone sets all have a PC port in the back,
so in fact the 48-port MN3100 actually supports 96
devices. The MN3100 should not be confused with lesser
products which provide a dumb hub-based network.
This is a very capable and powerful layer-3 data switch
with PBX features as a bonus.
Some bonus! In all, the switch provides over 250 rich
features supporting voice mail, auto attendant, email,
browsing, conference calls, call divert, account coding,
call record, personal & company speed dialling,
and much, much more…
There is full recognition of the legacy world of TDM
in that the product can support analogue devices,
POTs, Modems, Fax, Door Entry, Video etc.
And an inexpensive data slice will bring web-creation
support and impressive Checkmark firewall security
for your sensitive data.
This is the platform that narrows the advantage-gap
between SME and Enterprise!
Of course Mitel doesn't restrict VoIP solutions
to the SME market, we also have excellent Enterprise
market solutions that will provide IP to as many
as 10,000 desktops! Mitel has lots of Times Top 100
clients as well as Government and Local Authority
customers. We have developed VoIP applications
and solutions to support this big-user customer base
on our platform MN3300 ICP.
For more information on VoIP, or to book your free telephony audit contact Telinet, or leave your details and Telinet will contact you.
INTERNET PROTOCOL EXPLAINED
Internet Protocol (IP) is a carrier medium,
also quite reasonably described as a carrier protocol.
The protocol provides for data to be carried in packets,
each having an ‘address’ identifying the ultimate
destination.
Part of this address can be used to identify those packets
carrying data which originated as, and will ultimately
be reconverted to, voice.
IP is a non-guaranteed delivery protocol, thereby saving
the considerable bandwidth required for guaranteed
delivery overhead. Packet loss becomes an issue
in VoIP because, beyond a given level, the voice quality
becomes unacceptable.
The resolution, over the past five years, of the issues
of quality, maximum permissible levels of jitter, delay,
latency, packet loss etc., has enabled voice
to be considered as an application on the network.
However, for IP to provide a satisfactory level
of performance, a level that is comparable to existing
TDM performance, the LAN needs to be audited
and thereafter monitored to ensure adequacy of
bandwidth and adherence to standards of QoS.
The ultimate benefit of voice-enabled IP is that voice
and data can be treated as one class of packet.
Only in this way can full exploitation of available
bandwidth be accomplished.
For more information on VoIP, or to book your free telephony audit contact Telinet, or leave your details and Telinet will contact you.
INTERNET TELEPHONY EXPLAINED
The Internet, World Wide Web, Super Highway,
the names are many, is a service firmly based
on the networks built to carry voice traffic.
This background is both valuable and a hindrance.
It is valuable because the quality of infrastructure
required for a toll-quality voice service is very high.
Therefore resilience, routing, reliability etc. are built
into the physical network.
It is a hindrance because it is finite in its capacity,
having been built in large measure, before the days
of fibre-optics.
Nevertheless the public at large seems to believe
that it should be possible to make voice calls over their
Internet link. (At low or zero cost too.)
In practice the delivery of voice over the Internet network
is a very risky venture for reasons unconnected with
the network.
The problem is that the number and variety of modems,
routers, servers etc. that the traffic encounters,
diminishes the quality of the packet string to the point
where the voice quality is unacceptable.
We have seen already that voice packets are sensitive
to the jitter, delay, latency etc. on the LAN.
How much more of a problem it is over what is,
in effect, the World’s biggest WAN.
It is possible to build a solution for the Internet that
will allow high quality voice to be carried and delivered.
But the costs of so doing are not justified, and the market
is finding other ways of offering the simultaneous
‘voice and web screen’ service that is required.
For more information on VoIP, or to book your free telephony audit contact Telinet, or leave your details and Telinet will contact you.
TDM EXPLAINED
Time Divisional Multiplexing is a confusing phrase that
describes the basis of the digital Public Service Telephony
Network, PSTN, we have today.
Currently the PSTN is a digital medium using TDM.
This cannot continue, for all voice traffic will, very shortly,
be presented as IP. The public carriers are working hard
to convert their networks to IP and will be offering this
service within two or three years.
TDM handles voice traffic in a single, uninterrupted data
stream, created within the line-card of the dispatching
PBX, and delivers it that way to the line-card within
the receiving PBX. The line card(s) either code voice into
a digital stream or, at the receiving end, decode that
stream back into recognisable voice.
From line-card to line-card the digit stream remains
coded and is carried in a ‘reserved’ position within
the multi-channel pipes of the network.
It is this feature, the reservation of a time slot
in the channel, that gives the system its name.
Channels are divided into time slots and those slots carry
the digital traffic stream. The very act of dividing channels
is a multiplexing activity. Hence Time Divisional
Multiplexing - TDM.
This system has served the voice industry very well
for twenty years or more. The issue is that it is exclusively
used for voice traffic and does not allow for integration
of other forms of data. This has now been remedied with
the introduction of Voice over IP.
CAT 5 EXPLAINED
The world of cabling has developed considerably over
the last ten years. Driven by the needs of secure data
and telephony carriage, the world body EIA/TIA came
together to develop a list of Standards to which cable
installers could adhere.
Such installations would be of a nature and quality that
could be guaranteed for periods up to twenty years.
The value of Standardised cable systems is that their
ability in terms of bandwidth, distance, cross-talk,
contamination etc., can be defined under laboratory
conditions and then replicated in the field.
Thus the cable network will have a known and
reliable capacity.
Parallel with the development of these Standards
came the development of the physical equipment
to deliver them.
Originally called Structured Cabling, these systems
consist of every conceivable run, trunking, joint, bend,
angle etc. that can possibly be required. In addition
the manufacturers issue comprehensive usage guides
so that there is consistency from site to site.
These products, called ‘passive’ to differentiate
them from the ‘active’ products such as switches,
servers etc., are considered part and parcel of the
development of Standards within cabling, although
they are not specifically recognised or demanded
within the Standard Definition. The two together,
Standards and equipment, provide an environment
within which the credibility of data and voice can
be guaranteed.
Installers of cabling systems are able to provide
certification of the particular installation to the
‘CAT’ Standard.
For more information on VoIP, or to book your free telephony audit contact Telinet, or leave your details and Telinet will contact you.
BROADBAND EXPLAINED
Broadband is a ‘shorthand’ word that has never been
satisfactorily defined by any Statutory or Standardisation
body. It has developed alongside the explosion
of bandwidth that has characterised the growth
of the Internet.
In its simplest form the word is used to describe those
systems that rely upon passing several different
frequency-based data streams along a single cable.
Indeed TV could be defined thus.
However, Broadband has come to mean much more
than this simplistic definition. Indeed some form
of quantification is needed to define ‘Broadband’,
even if simply to highlight the huge growth in capacity
over recent times.
As recently as 1990, a cable that was capable of speeds
greater than 10Mb per sec. was a rarity. Today cables
capable of carrying at speeds up to 10,000,000 Mb
per sec. are becoming commonplace. A growth factor
of over one million to one!
In common with all Parkinson Law situations, we have
seen the demand for bandwidth grow at least as fast
as the ability to deliver it.
Today in the home we demand up to 10 Meg via a cable
company service, we can receive DSL at up to 2 Meg
and we use all of this space for entertainment
and Internet access.
In the office the 155 Meg of ATM, once considered
foolishly high, has been superseded by the drive towards
‘One Gig at every Desk’, a speed simply unthinkable
ten years ago.
We will therefore attempt to define ‘Broadband’
as a multi-stream cable system, capable of delivering
in excess of one Gigabyte of speed. That’s as good
as any definition of the issue that will dominate voice,
data and video carriage over the coming years.
For more information on VoIP, or to book your free telephony audit contact Telinet, or leave your details and Telinet will contact you.
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