Voice over Data Networks for Managers explains how and why companies converting their telephone systems to use voice over data systems. This book explains how your company can reduce communication costs 40% to 70%, keep using your existing telephone systems, and increase revenue from new communication applications.

The author worked with more than 100 companies to discover the critical steps companies should take and risks to avoid when transitioning from traditional telephone systems to voice over data networks. Telephone systems are essential to survival of companies and initial testing, transition strategies, and anticipation of future information integration are important parts of the conversion process.

Most important, this book explains why one company cannot provide All the Solutions and that it is important to have an unbiased understanding of the present options, key risks they may present, and how your selection will determine your ability to meet your future communication needs.

Learn the basics of how Internet telephone service works. This includes voice digitization, data compression, and how your choices of these will affects your voice quality. Discussed are the basic processes of sending packets through the Internet and how the loss of packets (and some do get lost) do not usually effect the voice quality. You will learn about gateways that convert data to telephone signals and Internet telephone service provider (ITSP) companies that manage the connections between you and standard telephones by using gatekeepers.

An overview of independent telephone systems including key telephone systems (KTS), private branch exchange (PBX) and computer telephone integration (CTI) helps you to understand what will be changed. An introduction of data communication networks explains the fundamentals of data networks including local area networks (LAN) and the Internet. You will learn what must happen to combine voice and data communication systems along with the key options and impact these choices will have on your data communication systems.

Discover the differences between IP Centrex and Internet PBX (iPBX) systems and which of these solutions may be the best choice for your company. You will learn about the many types of Internet telephones (IP Telephones). These telephone types range from software only (called Soft Phones) to full function Internet telephones (called Hard Phones). Learn about call servers and the advanced call control features they can provide.

Discussed are the typical types of data connections are used in company communication systems such as leased line, frame relay, DSL, cable modems, and how they may need to change (if at all) to permit voice over data service. You will also learn about the typical challenges such as firewalls and proxy servers and options that data communications managers will need to address when implementing these changes.

How to connect your data network to public telephone networks. You will about options including using gateways or Internet telephone service provider (ITSP) to provide connections to and from your data network to the public telephone network. Find out why the types of conversion you choose will dramatically effect the reliability and quality of your service.

Understand the key quality of service (QoS), security, and reliability issues and how to ensure you get toll quality voice when using data networks. Described are the differences in billing and operations. Discover some of the advanced features and services such as unified messaging and intelligent call routing that are not possible with most traditional telephone systems.

There are potential challenges and solutions with voice over data network service. You will learn how companies have overcome many of these challenges and in some cases, turned these challenges into benefits.

Learn the language and standard used by the industry including H.323, Session Initiated Protocol (SIP), Media Gateway C