Getting Started with Cisco UC Technologies

When Alexander Graham Bell invented the first telephone in March 1876, he could hardly have conceived the impact it would have. Today, nearly a century and a half later, human beings communicate verbally using landline phones (e.g., traditional home telephone) and cellular telephones, and access data along these very same lines. Bell’s original device made use of analog technologies of the day, which was transitioned to digital transmission in the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) core. Voice conversations in this proverbial world took place through a series of physical electrical circuits, thus named circuit-switched. The next progression and/or transition of telephony came in the form of packet-switched telephony, giving way to the all too familiar term VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). In positioning its technologies for this next-generation methodology, Cisco pioneered a number of critical elements that paved the way for practical, affordable telephony that we will examine here.

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