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ACD

Average Call Duration.

API

An application programming interface (API) is a source code interface that a computer system or program library provides to support requests for services to be made of it by a computer program.

ATA

An analog telephony adapter, or analog telephone adapter, (ATA) is a device used to connect one or more standard analog telephones to a digital and/or non-standard telephone system such as a Voice over IP based network. An ATA usually takes the form of a small box with a power adapter, one Ethernet port, and one or more FXS telephone ports. Users can plug one or more standard analog telephone devices into the ATA and the analog device(s) will operate, usually transparently, on a VoIP network.

CallerID

Caller ID (caller identification or CID, and more properly calling number identification - CNID) is a telephony service that transmits the caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment during the ringing signal or when the call is being set up but before the call is answered. Where available, Caller ID can also provide a name associated with the calling telephone number. The information made available to the called party is visible on a small liquid crystal display imbedded on the telephone, or on a separate unit which is connected to the telephone.

Call origination

Call Origination, also known as voice origination, refers to the collecting of the calls initiated by a calling party on a telephone exchange of PSTN, and handing off the calls to a VoIP endpoint or to another exchange or telephone company for completion to a called party.

CDR

Telephone exchanges generate so called Call Detail Records (CDRs) which contain detailed information about calls originating from, terminating at or passing through the exchange. Not surprisingly CDRs are used for billing.

CNAM

A CNAM database contains calling party names to be used when identifying a calling party.

Codec

Voice transmission is analogical, whereas the data network is digital. The process to sample analogical waves into digital information is made by an encoder-decoder (CODEC). There are many standards to sample an analogical voice signal into a digital one. The process is often quite complex. Most of the conversions use pulse code modulation (PCM) or variations.

CSV

The comma-separated values (or CSV; also known as a comma-separated list or comma-separated variables) file format is a file type that stores tabular data. The format dates back to the early days of business computing. For this reason, CSV files are common on all computer platforms.

DID Direct Inward Dialing. "DID"

In order for people connected to the traditional PSTN network to call people connected to VoIP networks, DID numbers from the PSTN network are obtained by the administrators of the VoIP network, and assigned to a gateway in the VoIP network. The gateway will then route calls incoming from the PSTN across the IP network to the appropriate VoIP user. Similarly, calls originating in the VoIP network will appear to users on the PSTN as originating from one of the assigned DID numbers, if the user has properly setup his callerid.

Inbound

Inbound is traffic received and is directed to your DID numbers.

Billing Increments

Methods to calculate rates in order to bill calls. For example, (with 6 second billing increments) if you call the USA for 10 seconds, you will be charged for 12 seconds (2 x 6 seconds since this is a 6 seconds increments call) of a minute, not the whole minute.

Jitter

Jitter is a typical problem of the connectionless networks or packet switched networks. The call is divided into packets and each packet can travel by a different path from the emitter to the receiver. Jitter is technically the measure of the variability over time of the latency across a network. In general, it is a problem in slow-speed links or with congestion. It is hoped that the increase of QoS (quality of the service) mechanisms like priority buffers, bandwidth reservation or high-speed connections (100Mb Ethernet, E3/T3, SDH) can reduce jitter problem in the future although it will keep on being a problem for a long time.

Latency

Latency is also called lag. Latency is the time between the moment a voice packet is transmitted and the moment it reaches its destination. Latency leads to delay and finally to echo. It is caused by slow network links. This is what leads to echo. There are two ways latency is measured: one direction and round trip. One direction latency is the time taken for the packet to travel one way from the source to the destination. Round-trip latency is the time taken for the packet to travel to and from the destination, back to the source. In fact, it is not the same packet that travels back, but an acknowledgement. Latency is measured in milliseconds (ms) - thousandths of seconds.

NAT Transversal

NAT (Network Address Translation) is a technology most commonly used by firewalls and routers to allow multiple devices on a LAN with 'private' IP addresses to share a single public IP address. A private IP address is an address, which can only be addressed from within the LAN, but not from the Internet outside the LAN. In order to let a device with a private IP address communicate with other devices on the Internet, there needs to be a translation between private and public IP addresses at the point where the LAN connects to the Internet, that is within the firewall/router connecting the LAN to the Internet. Such a translation is commonly referred to as NAT (for Network Address Translation) and a router doing such translation is often called a NAT router or NAT firewall/router. Sometimes NAT is also called IP Masquerading. The passing of traffic through NAT is called NAT Traversal.

Packet Loss

Packet loss can significantly degrade a VOIP call creating audible errors.

Prepaid Services

Prepaid refers to services paid for in advance. Examples include pay as you go cell phones, and stored-value cards such as gift cards and preloaded credit cards. Prepaid allow customers to monitor and budget usage in advance.

PSTN

The public switched telephone network (PSTN) is the network of the world's public circuit-switched telephone networks, in much the same way that the Internet is the network of the world's public IP-based packet-switched networks. Originally a network of fixed-line analog telephone systems, the PSTN is now almost entirely digital, and now includes mobile as well as fixed telephones. It is sometimes referred to as the Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS).

SER

SIP Express Router (SER) is a high-performance, configurable, free software SIP (cit. RFC 3261 ) server . It can act as SIP registrar, proxy or redirect server. SER features presence support, RADIUS/syslog accounting and authorization, XML-RPC-based remote control, etc. Web-based user provisioning, serweb, is available. SER's performance allows it to deal with operational burdens, such as broken network components, attacks, power-up reboots and a rapidly growing user population. SER can be configured for many scenarios including small-office use, enterprise PBX replacements and carrier services. SER is publicly available under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

SIP

"The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is an application-layer control (signaling) protocol for creating, modifying, and terminating sessions with one or more participants. The latest version of the specification is RFC 3261 from the IETF SIP Working Group. In November 2000, SIP was accepted as a 3GPP signaling protocol and permanent element of the IMS architecture. It is widely used as a signaling protocol for Voice over IP, along with H.323 and others.

Soft Phone

A softphone is a software for making telephone calls over the Internet using a general purpose computer, rather than using dedicated telephone hardware. Often a softphone is designed to behave like a traditional telephone, sometimes appearing on the computer screen as an image of a phone, with a display panel and buttons with which the user can interact. A softphone is used with a mic/speakers or headset connected to the sound card of the PC, or with a USB phone.

Soft Switch

A softswitch is a central device in a telephone network which connects calls from one phone line to another, entirely by means of software running on a computer system. This work was formerly carried out by hardware, with physical switchboards to route the calls.

Sub Account

A sub-account can be used to break down an account into multiple smaller accounts. This could be for better tracking of detailed budgets and expenses, to connect multiple PBX systems, connect devices from different locations or simply to connect multiple devices to a VOIP service without the need of a PBX. With the use of sub accounts, the customer doesn't need to open multiple accounts and manage multiple balances to use the service.

Termination

Call Termination, also known as voice termination, refers to the handing off or routing of calls from one telephone company, also known as a carrier or provider, to another telephone company. The terminating point is the end point. The originating point is the party who initiates the call. This term is highly used when referring to calls while using voip: a call initiated as a VoIP call is terminated using the PSTN. The opposite of call termination is call origination, where a call initiated from the PSTN is terminated using VoIP.

For additional information:

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