Glossary of Key VoIP Phone System Terms

In addition to the dramatic cost savings and advanced features and options, a big reason why a growing number of businesses are switching from a traditional phone system to a leading-edge VoIP phone system is ease-of-use.

Indeed, a business owner who recently made the switch was quoted by Business News Daily as saying: “When the landline goes down, diagnosing and fixing the issues are never easy or quick, leaving me and my employees extremely frustrated. VoIP is very user-friendly, and having the proper network, we have yet to encounter any significant issues that hinder our ability to communicate with our customers." 

In the same light, understanding key VoIP phone system lexicon is also refreshingly easy. Here’s a rundown of some key terms that you’ll come across as you research options, solutions and vendors:

ANI: Automatic Number Identification; a function that sends the billing number of an incoming call.

ATM: Asynchronous Transfer Mode; a technology for switched, connection-oriented transmission of voice, data and video.  

AS: Autonomous System; a combination of networks that share a routing methodology.

Bandwidth: The capacity of a transmission link, usually expressed in BPS (bits per second)

Broadband: a catch-all term that describes technology that supports integrated access to voice, data, video, and other interactive delivery services.  

DID: Direct Inward Dialing; a VoIP feature that lets callers reach an internal extension (i.e. employee) without having to go through a switchboard or attendant.  

Dynamic Jitter Buffer: Used to gather and store voice packets, and then shift them accordingly in order to enhance audio quality.   

Firewall: Used to protect VoIP networks (and other networks) from unauthorized access.

Gateway: a protocol converter that allows data to seamlessly exchange between endpoints.

Internet Telephony: basically any kind of communication that uses the internet to launch, manage and receive information (e.g. data, voice, video, etc.).

IP: A family of specifications that define how information should be transmitted over data networks.

Latency: The duration it takes for a packet to travel from its source to its intended destination (latency is also sometimes referred to as “delay”).

QoS: Quality of Service; a measure of performance used to assess the capacity of a system to transmit information.

VoIP: Voice over IP telephony; a catch-all term for technologies that use IP packet-switched connections to transmit information (e.g. data, voice, video, etc.). VoIP is an advanced alternative to public switched telephone networks (PSTN).

Learn More

At Votacall, we pride ourselves on “demystifying” VoIP phone systems, and helping business decision-makers clearly and thoroughly understand their options, and especially, the advantages and benefits they can expect to reap from minute one, day one.

To learn more, contact the Votacall team today. Your consultation with us is free.

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