Glossary of Terms

ADSL 

Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line

ADSL transforms the existing twisted copper pair between the telephone exchange and the telephone socket into a high-speed digital line.

Codec

Coder / Decoder

A technique used to compress/decompress speech or audio signals.

ENUM

Electronic Numbering

ENUM is an internationally approved method for connecting the telephone communications network to the Internet. ENUM is designed to enable you to call someone on different electronic communications devices and software applications by using a single identifier – a telephone number converted into a domain name. The first main use of ENUM will be to link different VoIP servers so that telephones within businesses that use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to connect users within an internal network can use the same technology to connect users to external customers via the Internet. At present it is easy to connect from one employee within a company to another in the same company using a VoIP server. That still works if an employee is a home worker who connects over the Internet – the VoIP server recognises the numbers within its system and connects the call as if the home worker were in the office.

QoS

Quality of Service

The service level defined by a service agreement between a network user and a network provider, which guarantees a certain level of bandwidth and data flow rates.

SIP

Session Initiation Protocol

A standard protocol for initiating an interactive user session that involves multimedia elements such as video, voice, chat, gaming, and virtual reality.

SLA

Service Level Agreement

A SLA is an agreement concerning a measurable level of service between the service provider and the service receiver.

VOIP

Voice Over Internet Protocol

A term used in IP telephony for a set of facilities for managing the delivery of voice information using the Internet Protocol (IP).