Glossary

A

ADSL

Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line - A high-speed broadband technology that provides access to the Internet. It allows high speed data to be carried over copper network phone lines.

• See
• Internet Direct

ATM

Asynchronous Transfer Mode - A high-bandwidth, low-delay, packet-based switching protocol that allows voice, video, text and data to be multiplexed together into a single transmission network with different qualities of service.

• See
• Ethernet ATM

B

C

Converged/Convergence

Bringing stand alone (or siloed) platforms together. Instead of having separate voice, mobile and data platforms, new technology will link platforms and run multiple technologies off the one common platform.

CoS

Class of Service – allows customers to apply priority labels to their IP packets, and the IP VPN network to process the packets according to that priority.

• See
• IP VAS

D

E

Ethernet

A local area network (LAN) protocol, Ethernet uses a bus topology and supports data transfer rates of 10 Mbps. It is one of the most widely implemented LAN standards.

• See
• Ethernet Line (E-Line)

F

Frame Relay

A simplified packet transport protocol used to connect local area networks (LANs) over large distances. It offers high speed data transmission to customers connecting any number of sites to other national or international locations.

G

GPRS

General Packet Radio Service - An effective use of limited bandwidth within the GSM network which is particularly suited to sending and receiving bursts of data such as e-mail and web browsing.

GSM

Global System for Mobile Communications - European digital standard for mobile phones based on time division multiple access (TDMA). TDMA allows several conversations to share a single radio channel by each transmitting digitised voice within its allocated timeslot.

• See

H

HFC

Hybrid Fibre Coaxial cable - Used for pay tv and broadband cable modem.

HSDPA

High Speed Downlink Packet Access - high-speed evolution of GSM/EDGE (Global System for Mobile Communication/Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution), which shares a common core network.

I

IP

Internet Protocol - Part of the family of protocols describing software that tracks Internet addresses, directs outgoing messages, and recognises incoming messages. Used in gateways to connect networks at a high level.

• See
• IP MAN

IP Core

The core element of a network that carries and logically splits voice, data and video using IP technology.

ISDN

Integrated Services Digital Network - A digital service providing switched and dedicated integrated access to voice, data and video.

• See
• Telstra Integrated Messaging powered by Soprano

IVR

Interactive Voice Response - Automated customer service or information selection based on pre-recorded voice prompts controlled by a touch-tone telephone or voice-recognition system.

J

K

L

M

MPLS

Multi-Protocol Label Switching) - using new technology Cisco CRS1 switches, multiple networks will be collapsed into one, providing a network offering scaling capacity up to 92 Tera bits per second – an overall capacity increase by 77 times. A versatile solution to address problems faced by present day networks – speed, scalability, class of service management and traffic engineering. It meets bandwidth-management and service requirements for next generation Internet protocol (IP)-based backbone networks.

N

Next G

Telstra's trade mark name for its third generation (3G) mobile network. The 3G network is technically known as '3GSM 850MHz.

• See

Next IP

Telstra's scalable, end-to-end IP network, supporting richer, faster broadband and Ethernet services, plus voice services with guarranteed QoS - delivered via copper, HFC and 3G mobile access.

• See
• IP WAN

O

P

Packet

In a packet-switched network, such as the Internet, data is packaged and routed in ‘blocks’ or packets, each having a header with the network destination address. Packet switched networks are also described as ‘connectionless’ because the paths selected by routers can vary from moment to moment, as each router is updated with current network information.

PSTN

Public Switched Telephone Network - A fixed-line, standard home telephone service, delivered over copper wires.

• See
• Telstra Packaged Speech Solutions

Q

QoS

Quality of Service - Some customers require specified throughput of information for particular services (eg delay sensitive voice traffic) which is referred to as a specific QoS.

R

S

SHDSL

Symmetric High-Bitrate Digital Subscriber Loop - designed to transport rate-adaptive symmetrical data across a single copper pair at data rates from 192 kbps to 2.3 Mbps or 384 kbps to 4.6 Mbps over two pairs.

T

U

ULL

Unconditioned Local Loop - One or more twisted copper pairs between the exchange and network boundary of a customer’s premises. ULL allows the service carriage provider direct access to the household and business using Telstra’s communications wires.

V

VoIP

Voice over IP - Voice over internet calls – the carriage of voice traffic over a data network via ‘packets’ containing the voice data.

VPN

Virtual Private Network - Corporate VPN uses Telstra’s national intelligent network to combine all the company’s communications between sites and mobiles, even international branches, giving customers the benefits of a private company network without the cost.

• See

W

WAN

Wide Area Network.

• See
• IP WAN

WiFi

Wireless Fidelity - The most prevalent form of WLAN technology. Wireless local area networks (WLANs) are small-scale wireless networks with a typical radius of several hundred feet. Wi-Fi is specified in the IEEE 802.11b standard. It operates in the 2.4GHz range.

• See

X

Y

Z