Installation guide

Trunk and channel terminology 27-2
Chapter 27: Understanding Wave Trunks
Wave Global Administrator Guide
• Analog trunk. Transport a single channel of traffic and are commonly referred to as
Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) trunks (and sometimes known as analog lines
or analog channels). These trunks are similar to the phone lines running into your
house.
In Wave terminology, we refer to analog trunks as either trunks or channels in the
documentation, and as channels in the Management Console user interface.
•
Digital trunk. Transport multiple channels of traffic. Each digital channel can carry
a single voice call or up to 1.544 Megabits per second (Mbps) of data traffic.
•
Line. See channel. Typically refers to analog, not digital.
•
Trunk group. Indicates a grouping of analog or digital channels. These groupings can
handle inbound calls, outbound calls, or both, depending on the trunk group or
connection type, and they can handle only voice traffic.
•
Connection. A Wave term used to indicate a grouping of digital channels configured to
handle network traffic. These groupings can handle only data traffic.
•
Card or module. A Wave hardware component into which the cables carrying the signals
from the central office (your trunks) plug.
•
Port. The physical receptacles, one per trunk, on a card or module into which cables plug.
Some terms are used differently when referring to analog vs. digital media. The following table
describes these differences (card, module, and port are not included in the table, because these
terms are identical across analog and digital media.)
Term Analog Digital
Channel
A single call; same as trunk and line A single call or data connection
Trunk
A single channel, call; same as
channel and line
Multiple channels carrying multiple
calls or data connections
Trunk group
A named, specified group of voice
channels, or trunks
A named, specified group of voice
channels
Connection
N/A A named, specified group of data
channels
Release 2.0
September 2010