Home VoIP IP PBX Telephony What is IP telephony?
What is IP telephony? PDF Print E-mail

IP PBXWith a traditional analogue or digital telephone system the connection between the telephone handset and the phone server (PBX) is made via a dedicated telephone cable. Therefore a dedicated cable is required for each handset.

The convergence of networking and telephony does away with this enabling you to connect a telephone handset directly into an existing network port. The voice and command data is transmitted over the internal network by IP protcol to the phone server. This has the advantage of only requiring a single cable infrastructure within the building. Telephone handsets have two network ports - 1 for connection to the nearest network point and a 2nd to network enable another device such as a PC. This 'pass-through' port means you do not require additional network ports.

Call termination - Traditional or VoIP

Inbound and outbound calls can go directly from the phone server via a traditional route such as a standard phone line (PSTN) or ISDN / ISDN 30. Alternatively calls can be terminated via IP over a data connection. The latter is termed VoIP. The calls are carried over a data connection to our host provider, who then routes them to the destination party. Although a standard Internet connection could be used for VoIP we only use secure and ultra reliable MPLS data connections. This type of connection does not traverse over the Internet as it terminates directly with our host providers data centre in Telehouse London. Not only is this data connection very reliable but the traffic is secure due to avoiding the public Internet. The MPLS connection is dedicated to VoIP traffic only and quality of service is guaranteed.

VoIP termination is becoming more and more common place. If you are considering such a system it is vital you are using a provider that offers quality of service guarantees for delivery of VoIP traffic. Cutting corners using a standard Internet connection is not suitable and results in downtime and poor quality.

With either method you choose to have your calls terminated the features available on the PBX server are the same. For a full list of our IP PBX features please see here > IP PBX Features.