IP Telephony Components
The components that must be added to your infrastructure in order to facilitate IP
telephony are what really blur the line between the traditional voice infrastructure
and your data infrastructure. Here we cross a line into a new realm of
devices—but are they voice or are they network? The answer, of course, is that
they are both. I think an important point to remember when considering a converged
infrastructure is that no matter what we are dealing with, voice, video, or
data, it is all communications.This is the information needed for the end-user to
effectively carry out his or her business. Perhaps we should begin to consider
ourselves communications engineers as opposed to using the traditional network
engineer or voice systems administrator titles that have helped to separate the different
disciplines for decades. In this section, we will discuss some of these components
and their features.