Glossary
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Telephony words, phrases and Acronyms
ACD - Automatic Call Distribution – Method of evenly distributing calls to individual extensions or groups and for queuing callers if extensions are busy.
ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) A form of Digital Line technology, a data communications technology that enables data transmission over copper or aluminium alloy telephone lines at a faster rate than a conventional modem can provide. This is done by utilising higher frequencies not used by a standard voice telephone call. A frequency splitter (microfilter) allows a single telephone linen to be used concurrently for both ADSL service and voice calls. ADSL can generally only be distributed over short distances from the main BT Exchange, typically less than 4 kilometres (2 mi), but the availability should be checked prior to provision.
API - Application Programming Interface – The interface (calling convention protocol) by which an application program accesses the computer operating system and other services.
ATM - Asynchronous Transfer Mode – A high bandwidth, high speed (up to 155 Mbps), controlled-delay fixed-size packet "cell" switching and transmission system integrating multiple data types (voice, video and data). (ATM is often known as "cell relay").
BCMR - Basic Call Management Reporting System
CAT5 - Network cabling consisting of four twisted pairs of copper wire terminated by an RJ45 connector.
CMS - Call Management System – An administration, database and reporting application designed for zones with complex contact centre operations receiving a large volume of calls .
DDI - Direct Dial-In (DDI) also called Direct inward dialing (DID), is a feature for use with their customers' private branch exchange (PBX) systems. This allows individuals on the site to receive calls without the need for an operator reception. In DID service the telephone company provides one or more lines to the customer for connection to the customer's PBX and allocates a range of telephone numbers to this line (or group of lines) and forwards all calls to such numbers via the main incoming lines
DECT - Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications is a digital wireless technology used for local cordless coverage in both home and corporate phone systems. A very flexible standard, it can be applied to cordless PBX, wireless local loop, and dual mode GSM/DECT systems.
Dongle - A dongle is a small hardware device that connects to a computer to confirm licencing and authentication of a piece of software.
Gigabit - In data communications a gigabit is one billion bits, or 1,000,000,000 bits. It’s commonly used for measuring the amount of data that is transferred in a second between two telecommunication points. Gigabit Ethernet is high speed Ethernet (local area network ) that can provide data transfer rates of about 1gigabit per second. Gigabits per second can be abbreviated Gbps.
HTTPS - Developed by Netscape, Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer (HTTP over SSL) is a Web Protocol built into a web browser that encrypts and decrypts user page requests and pages that are sent in response by the Web server.
IPSI - IP Server Interface
IPSEC - Internet Protocol Security (also abbreviated to IP Security) – Encrypts TCP/IP traffic to secure communications within an intranet and provide the highest levels of security for VPN traffic across the Internet.
ISDN - Integrated Services Digital Network – Digital modem line. Provides higher speeds than K56/V90. Single channel ISDN provides speeds of 56K to 64K. Dual channel ISDN provides speeds of 110K to 128K.
IVR - Interactive Voice Response – This system allows incoming callers to interact with a computer through speech or throught the telephone keypad.
JAVA - A high level, object-oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems, similar to C++, simplified to eliminate some language features thus avoiding common programming errors. Java is a general purpose programming language with a number of features that make it well suited for the Web.
LAN - Local Area Network – A collection of computers linked together by an network usually on a single site but occasionally more wide-ranging.
L2TP - Layer Two Tunnelling Protocol is a standard (RFC2661 and RFC3193) for the connections of private network connections over the Internet.
ODBS - Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a standard or open application programming interface (API) for accessing a database.
O/S - an operating system (OS) is the software responsible for the control and management of hardware and basic system operations. and providing a foundation to run application software such as word processing programs and web browsers.
PBX - Private Branch Exchange (also called Private Business eXchange or PABX for Private Automatic Branch Exchange) is a telephone exchange handling communications for a particular site or office, rather than a public (BT) Exchange.
PoE - Power over Ethernet – Describes a system to transmit electrical power, along with data, to remote devices over standard twisted-pair cable in an Ethernet network.
PPP - Point-to-Point Protocol - Provides a standard means of encapsulating data packets sent over a single-channel WAN link. It is the standard WAN encapsulation protocol for the interoperability of bridges and routers.
P2P - Peer-to-Peer networking (P2P) is an application that runs on a personal computer and shares files with other users across the internet. P2P networks work by connecting individual computers together to share files instead of having to go through a central server.
SDK - A Software Development Kit allows software developers to create products to run on a particular platform or to work with an API.
SES - SIP Enablement (see below)
SIP - Session Initiation Protocol used to set up internet communications sessions such as telephony, instant messaging or conferencing,
TAPI - Telephony Application Program Interface
TDM - Time Division Multiplexing is a traditional transmission system in which numerous signals are combined on a single communications line or channel. Each signal is broken up into many short segments and reassembled at their destination.
Trunk - A trunk is a general-use telephony circuit connecting the national network to a PBX establishing connection. SIP Trunks are also now available to carry voice over a pure IP connection into the World Wide Web rather than through separate fixed line circuits.
TTS - Text To Speech – a technology reading digital documents and synthesized speech from the content, effectively allowing a document to be read aloud.
SNMP - Simple Network Management Protocol is the network management protocol used in TCP/IP networks providing a means to monitor and manage control network devices, performance and security.
USB - Universal Serial Bus provides a single common interface to peripherals and plug-and-play configuration.
VoIP - Voice over Internet Protocol is the technology used to transmit voice conversations over a data network using the Internet Protocol.
VPN - A Virtual Private Network provides a secure connection between two or more computers across a public network (such as the Internet ). Data is secured by encryption between the participating computers and it "travels" through private and identified roiutes or "tunnels" thus avoiding deliberate or accidental recognition by thoswe outside the VPN group .
WAN - Wide Area Networks provide connections between LANs that are at different geographical locations and typically slower than LAN.
WiFi - Wireless Fidelity – A term for certain types of wireless local area networks (WLAN) that use specifications conforming to IEEE 802.11b. WiFi has gained acceptance in many environments as an alterative to a wired LAN. Many airports, hotels and other services offer public access to WiFi networks so people can log on to the Internet and receive emails on the move. These locations are known as hotspots.
XML - Extensible Markup Language allows information and services to be encoded using semantics and structure understood by people and computers. Used for information exchange and easily extended to include user-specified and industry-specified tags.