Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM): A
communications standard that includes hardware and signaling (such as Ethernet
and Token Ring) at speeds ranging from 25Mbps to more than 655Mbps. Among ATM's
features is the ability to dedicate bandwidth to particular conversations.
Although touted as a replacement for Ethernet, ATM is much more important in the
interconnect market. ATM drivers are available for Windows NT but currently use
LAN emulation, so they can't directly reserve channels for individual
conversations.
Automatic Call Distribution (ACD): A
system that answers incoming calls to a call center and transfers them to live
employees generally in the order in which the calls came in. Often, the ACD
system can interpret caller ID or ANI information and route calls to the
appropriate employees after retrieving the callers' records from the corporate
database.
Automatic number identification (ANI): Information
that comes in at the beginning of each call, usually with in-band Multifrequency
Digits (MF) or digitally on an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) D
channel. ANI provides terminating CT equipment with the calling party's phone
number, so that you immediately know the caller's identity. Companies often use
ANI with 800, 888, and 900 phone numbers.
Automatic speech recognition (ASR): A
feature that lets computers interpret and respond to spoken commands. A popular
PC-based ASR application is the talking typewriter (e.g., IBM and Kurzweil). CT
applications let you control voicemail, auto attendant, and interactive voice
response (IVR) systems using the spoken word instead of a touch-tone phone.
Generally, when a large number of people use the ASR system, it supports a
limited vocabulary of a few dozen words. When only one person uses the ASR
system (i.e., speaker-dependent ASR), you can train it to recognize a much
larger vocabulary.
Channel: A dedicated or apparently
dedicated unit of bandwidth. The bandwidth of analog phone calls, for example,
is 56Kbps or 64Kbps. The communications industry often aggregates analog calls
into T-1s. LANs, WANs, and the Internet are packet-based, and therefore, have no
way to dedicate bandwidth to a particular conversation.
Component Object Model/Distributed Component
Object Model (COM/
DCOM): A protocol for program and data objects to
communicate either inside a computer (COM) or over a network (DCOM). DCOM
originated from Network Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) and is
Microsoft-centric, although it's based on the Open Group's (formerly the Open
Software Foundation) Distributed Computing EnvironmentRemote Procedure
Call specification. Some CT applications use DCOM for interprocess
communications. DCOM's competitors include Common Object Request Broker
Architecture (CORBA) and the almost dead OpenDoc.
Computer telephony (CT): A technology that
applies computer intelligence to the making, receiving, and managing of phone
calls. In other words, CT systems automatically handle and process phone calls.
CT systems often let you use a touch-tone phone or spoken commands to control
various aspects of calls. CT products include voice and fax messaging, auto
attendants, fax-on-demand (FOD), fax servers, and IVR. Core technologies include
voice recognition (ASR), text-to-speech conversion, and the Internet.
Computer telephone integration (CTI): A
class of CT systems that interconnect a local PBX or ACD system to a computer
system. With CTI, you can control calls by clicking controls on a computer
instead of pushing buttons on a touch-tone phone.
Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS):
A feature that sends the dialed phone number to the terminating CT equipment.
DNIS lets CT systems use the same equipment to handle different called numbers
with different greetings and applications. Companies often use DNIS with 800,
888, and 900 phone numbers.
Direct Inward Dialing (DID): A special
trunk phone line that passes the last two to four digits of the dialed phone
number to the terminating CT equipment. DID requires special hardware to read
these digits.
Fax-on-demand (FOD): A system that lets
you use a touch-tone phone to receive stored documents on your fax machine.
Documents can be data sheets, spreadsheets, scanned pages, or any other
printable material. Some FOD systems support faxing Web-based documents, which
theoretically lets you maintain only one set of documents instead of two (one
for the Web and the other for the FOD system).
Fax over IP (FoIP): An emerging method of
sending faxes over the Internet, either to an IP fax server or another phone
line. FoIP is different from traditional organizationwide fax solutions in that
it sends the much smaller source material (e.g., cover sheet and Word document)
over the Internet to the fax server nearest the dialed number.
Fax server: A LAN-based server that
manages all incoming and outgoing fax traffic for an organization. A fax server
provides centralized management of corporate fax functions. It also enables
desktop faxing without your installing
a fax card or fax phone line at
each desktop computer. Companies often integrate a fax server with Microsoft
Exchange or Outlook so that employees visually manage incoming faxes in their
inboxes.
First-party call control: The ability to
control calls that come to your phone. Microsoft's Telephony API (TAPI) defines
a set of commands that let you answer, transfer, park, and forward calls.
H.100: A standard for a physical CT bus
interface layer for the PCI computer chassis card slot. H.100 will drive new
applications and open new markets.
H.323: A group of International Telegraph
Union standards for packet-based videoconferencing. (Previously, the standard
for circuit-switched video teleconferencing was H.320.) H.323 is applicable to
Internet video because it's based on the Internet Engineering Task Force's
Realtime Protocol/Realtime Transport Control Protocol. LAN and WAN
teleconferencing often uses H.323, but people often experience significant setup
and interoperability problems with it. These problems hamper H.323's widespread
use.
Inbound calls: An incoming call that
terminating CT equipment answers. For example, if you call a company's voicemail
system, your call is inbound to that system.
Interactive voice response (IVR): A system
that lets you request information, usually stored in databases, by pressing keys
on a touch-tone phone. Automated bank-by-phone services and automated flight
information are two examples of IVR.
IP telephony: A generic term for moving
voice and fax over TCP/IP networks.
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