New Trend of VoIP: IP PBX

With the in-depth application and development of the Internet, various new technologies emerge one after another. ISP, ICP, ASP, and other network companies are emerging constantly, promoting the continuous and rapid growth of data services, it is expected to reach and surpass the voice service in recent years.

IP will become the dominant technology in future information communication. Various services can be carried by an IP packet (EverythingoverIP), and IP information stream can be transmitted in various transmission media (IPoverEverything ), based on the IP network, the data, voice, and image service fusion and network convergence are achieved. Using a unified technical solution to build a new generation of information networks to provide comprehensive services such as voice, data, and images will become the goal of people and represent the development direction of the new generation of communication networks in the 21st century. IP Phone is one of the representative application technologies developed in this new network age.

1. The latest development direction in the IP Phone Field

As IP phones enter the market, IP Phone operators will launch new applications in addition to providing voice mail, call waiting, and high-speed access services to make their services favored by users.

1.1 assign the IP address of a common phone

A new application of IP phones is to assign IP capabilities to common phones. For example, Aplio/Phone2.0, recently released by Aplio, can connect common telephones to the Internet and be used together with IP phones and conference software compatible with H.323 Standards.

1.2 assign call center network capabilities

Some vendors (such as Essl and NetSpeak) have begun to launch IP phone products that allow users to call and access websites over the same telephone line, in addition, the call center sends online requests for user services to the agent. Therefore, the user can obtain real-time voice access to the agent without disconnecting from the Internet. As call centers play an important role in providing services to users in many enterprises, networked call centers will be widely used. Integrated message delivery integrated message transmission allows users to access e-mail, fax, and paging messages through a phone or PC. Although this integrated Message Access Service is still not common, industry insiders who operate on IP Phone Networks believe that it will become an important service method in the next few years. Some IP phone manufacturers are currently developing products that can provide integrated messaging services.

1.3IP Videophone

Another possible new application of IP Phone is to improve the video connection of IP phone calls. For example, Netspeak's WebPhone4.0 and VocalTec's InternetPhone5 products can all be used as real-time visual phones. VideooverIP also requires considerable bandwidth, which helps the combination of this technology and IP phones, this helps users of families and small businesses who often face bandwidth restrictions.

2. Basic principles and features of IPPBX Technology

In short, PBX is a group phone. It is widely used in enterprise offices and greatly improves the efficiency of enterprise services. However, traditional PBX has many problems. First, it does not support the emerging CTI (computer-telephone integration) and VoIP, and traditional PBX uses dedicated technologies, lack of openness and standards, and expensive. In recent years, with the popularity of the Internet and the success of IP, IPPBX Based on the IP protocol has emerged and is expected to solve the shortcomings of traditional PBX.

The IPPBX telephone switch system will play an important role in the Communication Industry in the 21st century by integrating the functions of computer networks and telephone switches. In the IPPBX network system, various telephone terminals use IP addresses for data communication. This not only enables communication, but also enables transmission of text, data, and images, integrating the telephone network with the computer network, implement the electronic office in the LAN. In particular, long-distance collaborative commerce and e-office will give full play to its powerful resource advantages, making business cooperation and work restructuring easy. The control center in the ippbx lan can effectively manage computer networks and telephone networks based on internal and external situations to share resources. With the help of Internet, IPPBX networks in different regions can achieve remote communication, e-office and e-commerce. Traditional PBX uses the principle of circuit switching to implement the functions of group telephones, while IPPBX uses the TCP/IP protocol and implements the same functions over Ethernet based on the principle of packet switching. Figure 1 shows a typical ip pbx application environment topology. The ip pbx suite contains a centralized Console software, a PSTN gateway that supports the H.323 protocol, and multiple Ethernet phones, and the optional Reverse Gateway ). The Console software is the core part of the ip pbx. It can configure the Extension Number, function buttons, and call management and routing policies of the phone; the PSTN gateway is used to implement communication between the IP network and the traditional circuit switching telephone network, and call from different network. The reverse gateway is used to serve the traditional analog telephone and fax machine.

When a user picks up a call from the other party, the system automatically sends the dial-up string and command to the Console software to locate the address of the called party and accept the call request. Once the call is established, subsequent voice traffic can be directly transmitted between the caller and the called, without having to go through the console, effectively reducing the latency.

The H.323 client in the network (such as a Netmeeting user) can also make calls with other phones. Before establishing a connection, it needs to call the extension number of the other party, and then establish a connection after arriving at the console. If the other party occupies a busy line, it can return a busy tone signal or directly transfer the call to the called party's voice mailbox, depending on the other party's settings.

IPPBX can also simulate circuit switching to make calls from an IP network to a traditional telephone network.

2.1basic features of ippbx

Since IPPBX is built on an open IP standard, all products comply with the same standards and have strong interoperability. However, the traditional PBX contains dedicated technologies from various manufacturers, which provide poor connectivity and compatibility between products. Therefore, using IPPBX can greatly save the cost of maintaining proprietary devices when using traditional products.

The expansion performance of IPPBX is good. When you need to expand multiple branch phones on an existing PBX, most old PBX devices do not support this expansion and must replace the internal modules, this is not a small expense, but if IPPBX is used, it is enough to spend about half of the money. In addition, IPPBX can directly use cheap ordinary analog phones, unlike traditional PBX, which requires expensive dedicated digital phones. Another attractive advantage of IPPBX is that it can use its VoIP function to call long-distance calls at the local price, greatly saving the cost of long-distance communication.

2.2difficulties of ippbx Development

Will IPPBX become popular in the future communication field? Not necessarily. The principle is very simple. Although IP-based communication devices have promising prospects, the products that appear in the form of PBX are not necessarily optimistic. In the VoIP field, there are too many implementation methods that can be thought of. Since the advent of CT (computer telephone) in 1993, various technologies have emerged. So far, the concepts of CT, IPPhone, InternetPhone, and NetPhone have not been unified, and the technical standards required by VoIP are difficult to be unified. Therefore, although IPPBX has many advantages over traditional PBX, it is difficult to directly compare it because of its different technical basis and PBX. In this way, IPPBX faces two pressures: one is the boycott of common PBX, and the other is the competition of other new technologies and new devices in the IP communication field.

2.3IPPBX Development Direction

Although IPPBX has encountered many problems in its development, IPPBX is still persistently present in front of us. We believe it can become an excellent product serving the masses. Therefore, it is necessary to discuss the future market hotspots of IPPBX, which will be the best way for IPPBX to reflect its vitality.

2.3.1IPPBX is an ideal platform for building next-generation call centers

The development of the call center to the CTIServer model has passed three stages:

(1) A single PBX and manual agent;

(2) PBX and computer-aided human agents;

(3) PBX is integrated with the computer network through the CTServer.

Through the development of the call center, it is not difficult to see that the development trend of the call center is characterized by diversified service objects and means, and in-depth and integrated computer technology applications. Therefore, the following problems must be solved in the development of a new generation call center (called the "fourth generation call center:

(1) providing services for users from the Internet (dial-up Internet or WWW), Fax, Telephone, etc;

(2) reduce costs and make small and medium-sized users have their own call centers;

(3) providing more and better performance;

(4) The functions of connecting call centers should be available to effectively allocate resources between call centers.

Using IPPBX as the call center of the platform completely solves the above problems. IPPBX products have higher performance and price ratios, which will certainly bring more market opportunities to call centers. Many people traditionally think that CTI = C + T, especially those who are familiar with the call center think that CTServer plays a plus sign role. Although CTI improves the performance of the call center, it also increases the operating costs. IPPBX is undoubtedly another development of CTI. It is no longer a simple addition of the two networks, but completely removes a set of expensive PBX networks and two network connection devices, the telephone network is only a means of accessing service objects. The design of this system structure reduces the call center cost by at least 30%. At the same time, the open IPPBX can provide many functions, this greatly improves the call center performance and price.

2.3.2IPPBX is an effective way to build a future integrated information system

In early 1990s, the commercialization of the Internet was successful, and the revolutionary changes in lifestyle and business methods led to two explosive increases: Internet users and various Web websites. Moore's law in the Internet world is shortened from 18 months in the chip age to half a year, and the bandwidth of the Internet backbone links of the main ISP will double every six months. On the other hand, new business models are constantly emerging, and people are no longer satisfied with the transmission of single data or text files. The bandwidth needs to be increased due to the transmission requirements of images, sounds, and videos. The emergence of TCP/IP protocol makes it possible to integrate traditional telecom services and network data services. Therefore, in recent years, the world's major telecom companies have undergone strategic restructuring, using high-speed broadband IP exchange routing technology to build a telecom business network, in the industry, the transmission rate of the broadband network should be defined as at least 2 Gb/s. In such a broadband network, many services can be effectively integrated, and various services can be connected to this network through limited interfaces. This is the integrated information network that everyone pursues. The ippbx and the mcu attached function will be one of the ways to build an effective switching node for this network, especially suitable for the construction of medium and small network systems.

2.3.3IPPBX can replace some group telephone systems

IPPBX can provide comprehensive network and voice solutions for group users to meet all-round demands for continuous enterprise operation and vigorous development. From complex call control and call center capabilities to integrated voice mail and computer/telephone integration; from caller identification to multiple, multi-level automatic attendant, easy addition, movement, and change of terminal phones; connection capabilities from LAN and WAN (LAN/WAN) to Internet. Enables enterprises to obtain all functions in an economic and manageable manner. The best feature of the IPPBX communication system is its flexibility. It is applicable to enterprise operations.

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