This report contains three articles:

Article 1: VoIP in the mainstream

Over the past 10 years, Voice over IP, once seen as a niche, has become a mainstay of converged services. What began as a quirky technique for communications between PCs on the Internet has grown into a sustainable mainstream technology that fully supports consumers, enterprise business, and carrier-grade operations. Today, VoIP provides the network foundation for the complete integration of voice, video, and data services with enterprise business applications. To appreciate the technologies of today, we need to consider the evolution that brought us here.

Article 2: The transition of trunking

This article looks at the evolution of telecommunications trunking technologies from traditional time division multiplexed (TDM) trunks and tie lines based on T-1 circuit infrastructure to IP-based trunking and built-in Session Initiation Protocol. SIP adoption has become a vital success factor on the road to unified communications and is critical to comprehensive integration with enterprise business applications to reach the Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) of tomorrow. More than another standards-based protocol, SIP has become the de facto standard for unified communications that bring voice, video, and data together.

Article 3: The convergence of trunking with the olatform

As voice traffic moves to VoIP and legacy TDM trunking technologies shift more to SIP, the two come together to deliver an environment for enterprise business that approaches nirvana. SIP connections, or trunks, were originally used internally by VoIP providers, then quickly matured into a service offered by Internet Telephony Service Providers that enabled enterprise connections from a corporate PBX system to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).