Road Map to VoIP Transports and Services

In This topic
^ Recognizing the abstract world of CSIs
^ Understanding transports
^ Uncovering the five carrier service infrastructures
^ Fitting VoIP and the Net in the CSI structure
Let’s face it — telecommunications can be daunting to those who have not given much thought as to how their voice gets from their phone’s handset to their Aunt Matilda in Dubuque. Be that as it may, the technology between you and Aunt Matilda is simply amazing.
This topic introduces you to the wonderful world of networks, transports, and transport services. Here you discover what a CSI is (besides a great family of television shows) and why you should even care. Before you are finished with this topic, you’ll have a good grasp of things you didn’t even know you needed to grasp. (Spooky, huh?)
This topic lays the groundwork for topics 5 through 8. Here you find the conceptual framework that lets you make sense of different ways of transmitting data, such as broadband, dedicated lines, and cable. You also discover why packet-switched communications methods are much better than traditional circuit-switched methods.
If you don’t want to take a peek behind the curtain of telecommunications, you don’t really need to read this topic — and you don’t even need to feel guilty about it! That’s not an effort to discount the information provided here, but a recognition that the information may not interest everyone. You can safely skip this topic and come back to it later when you finally develop a healthy curiosity as to why things work the way they do in the telecom world.