transformation in communications between an enterprise
and its ecosystem of partners, suppliers, and customers.
SIP may eventually become the unifying protocol for all com-
munications. You can find more information about SIP trunks,
connectivity to PSTN networks, and connecting enterprise
“islands” in Part 4.
Simplifying Communications
Architecture
Communications networks today are complex and costly to
operate. When you begin investigating ways to transition to
SIP telephony, you may feel rather bewildered by the array
of protocols, gateways, security constraints, and quality of
service issues. A considerable effort is required to plan,
build, and operate these multiple media streams that often
coexist on shared physical networks. Rush-hour traffic grid-
lock, by comparison, is an easy problem to solve.
SIP offers the promise of a single unifying protocol for all
communications. With SIP being widely deployed in both
service provider and enterprise networks, the need for gate-
ways that translate one protocol to another (for example,
IP to Time Division Multiplexing, or TDM) is eliminated.
Proprietary signaling protocols give way to a single standard
interface for all connectivity, whether for adding endpoints,
deploying contact center adjunct services, or even connect-
ing to trunk services for external communications. See Part 4
for more details on trunking with SIP.
An equally important foundation of SIP is the concept of
distributed intelligence. This concept, evident in exciting new
peer-to-peer (P2P) architectures such as Avaya one-X Quick
Edition, creates a new paradigm in communications, requir-
ing no PBX or communication server, only intelligent phones
and other endpoint devices as the mechanism for establish-
ing a working communications system. We discuss Quick
Edition in more detail in Part 6.
SIP scales well for the smallest businesses, where SIP-enabled
endpoints can be established in the absence of centralized
proxies and registrars. We discuss how SIP can power small
offices in Part 6.
SIP Communications For Dummies, Avaya Custom Edition
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