It could be quite intimidating for the new person to Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) with most articles or literature using significant amounts of jargon. This article will provide an overview of the terminology used in the VoIP arena but will not go into the actual detail of how VoIP works. Other articles by this author have been written in relation to basics of VoIP.

The first crucial term is VoIP which is the acronym for Voice Over Internet Protocol or Voice Over IP being the ability to make telephone calls over the internet. Other relevant terms are included below along with a laymans explanation:

ATA Analog Telephone Adaptor A device which converts analog telephone signal into a digital format for transmission over the Internet.

Codec A compression/decompression algorithm used in IP telephony.

Ethernet Used for Local Area Networks (LANs) and is a packet based transmission protocol.

PSTN Public Switched Telephone Network that is the standard landline based phone system.

QoS Quality of Service Refers to performance of the transmission system. For example is there any echo or delay.

SIP Session Initiation Protocol An application layer protocol that manages multimedia communications sessions.

VoIP Phone Telephone device that looks like an ordinary telephone that connects to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) however has an Ethernet port to allow connection to a TCP/IP computer network.

So next time you are reading some literature or articles on VoIP where the writers or authors do not define the acronyms, you will know a little more about what exactly they are trying to say. Whilst there are obviously many more acronyms and jargon associated with VoIP, this article provides a starting point. It is suggested that this article should be read in conjunction with previous articles relating to the basics of VoIP.