SIP has been the buzz in the Telecom industry for quite some time now, but what is it really? And why should you care about it?

To understand what SIP Trunking is and why you should care about it, we have to first understand where your voice networks and your data networks are today.

For the voice network, most companies have some sort of PBX (either IP or TDM) and a dedicated connection to the telephone company (usually Analog lines or a Primary Rate Interface or PRI). A typical Analog line allows for a single call to be placed or received simultaneously, while a PRI allows for 23 simultaneous calls.

For the data network, most companies have a dedicated Wide Area Network (WAN) and / or Internet connection. This consists of one or more connections per site, typically a T1, bonded T1s or a Metro Ethernet connection.

This means that a typical company has at least one dedicated telephone connection and one dedicated data connection per location. What if there was a way to combine these circuits and bring both voice and data connections into an office over a single connection.  Today, you can do this… if you are using SIP Trunking.

Ok, so what is SIP? SIP is a standards based protocol, based upon HTML, which allows us to wrap voice conversations in an IP packet. Once a voice conversation has been wrapped in an IP packet, voice becomes another application on our data network. Network administrators today have the flexibility in our data networks to transport these calls to any endpoint on our data network. This means that calls can be placed to any endpoint that we have IP connectivity to and con control Quality of Service (QOS) to and from.

Ok, so back to the original question, what is SIP Trunking? SIP Trunking uses the SIP protocol discussed above, but in SIP Trunking the call does not originate or terminate on our data network. Instead the telephone company sends and receives off net voice calls over a company’s data connection, eliminating the need for a dedicated telephone connection at each location.

Why should you care about SIP Trunking today? The most obvious answer is cost savings. By consolidating circuits per location, we are eliminating monthly Telco spend on a dedicated voice circuit.

Why should you care about SIP Trunking tomorrow? Once voice has become an application on our data network we have other options, such as adding video or presence information to the call. This allows us to customize the communication methods used by SIP on our own network. Today SIP Trunking typically involves transporting voice conversations to and from the Telephone Company over the data connection. However, there will come a time when service providers will also offer adding services such as presence and video to inter company calls. This is the future of SIP Trunking.

Author: Mike Cavanaugh

Posted at Geeknick

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