What is SIP Trunking?

green codes

Everyday advancements in the latest technology are making our lives better and simply blowing our minds! One of those many innovative technologies is SIP Trunking. As times progress, not a day goes by when we don’t hear about it and its impact on telecommunications solutions.

But many people are still unaware of what SIP Trunking is, how it works and affects us.

Therefore, the experts at Top 5 Business VoIP have compiled all the relevant information for your understanding. So, without further ado, let’s jump right in!

SIP Trunking, short for Session Initiation Protocol, is the system of transmitting voice and media telecommunications via the World Wide Web. In simpler terms, it’s the technology that helps individuals and businesses operate their communication over their internet connection as opposed to using a traditional phone (landlines).

The service of SIP Trunking is provided by SIP providers, which aren’t much different from traditional phone companies, except that their service is online and subsequently cheaper than their counterparts.

SIP Trunking and Your Communication Network

Since SIP Trunking is an IP connection, if you use VoIP solutions for your communications network, the service of SIP Trunking can be useful to you. SIP Trunking directs all voice and video calls over your VoIP network via signaling information.

A VoIP network runs on signals; it’s how it knows where the data has to be transmitted. That’s why SIP Trunking makes an important component in your VoIP communications network.

However, to better understand the technology of SIP Trunking we need to understand how VoIP communication solutions play out.

How Does VoIP Communications Network Work?

VoIP, which stands for Voice over Internet Protocol, is a telecommunication service that offers phone system over the internet as opposed to traditional telephony that is powered by your local phone company. In a VoIP network, when you make or receive a call the voice or media signals (in the case of video calls) are converted into digital signals, which are then transmitted over the internet.

This process of signal conversion can be understood as SIP Trunking. However, it’s a little more complicated than that:

How Does SIP Trunking Work?

Eliminating the physical network of a phone company, SIP Trunking is a unified communications protocol that requires no hardware, wire, circuit boxes to uphold a connection with PSTN; your phone service provider. SIP, which is the operative term, initiates the signaling process setting the premise for ‘trunking’.

Simultaneously, a SIP ‘Trunk’ is set up over your existing broadband connection, successfully eradicating the need for conventional phone lines.

When a call is made or received, SIP Trunking breaks the message into tiny data packets, tiny enough to be able to travel over the internet, and then these tiny packets are individually transmitted to the end use or intended recipient, where the data packets are reassembled to make a coherent message.

There are essentially two types of data packets; the first is the signaling packet that sets the premise for the call session. The second type is known as media packet, which as the name suggests, transmits media information.

So to speak, media packets transfer your voice and video messages across networks. The breaking down and reassembling of the data packets are done in real time so the caller and receiver don’t experience any lag or latency during the call. If explained in an example:

When you say hello on your VoIP Phone, the VoIP service converts your voice signals into analogue signals, or more commonly known as a binary digit combination in IT language. This is also known as the process of encoding. Via SIP Trunking your VoIP service provider encodes your data and decodes it so swiftly, that your intended recipient hears the ‘hello’ immediately after you’ve said it!

Your video or media messages are also transmitted in a similar manner as your message is broken down into media packets and delivered to the end user after they are reconstructed back into their original form. Considering this is just a single aspect of interchange, we can deduce how expansive and swift the process of data encoding and decoding must be to enable smooth communications.

However, for successful IP communication solutions, we need the IP address of both, the caller and receiver as well as the same coding system on both ends. Therefore, SIP Trunking becomes the common protocol between both parties.

Since SIP Trunking replaces analog landlines, it helps businesses and individuals operate their communication network through a single entry point. The reduction in phone lines therefore automatically translates into a reduction in the cost communications and their maintenance. But that’s just one of the many benefits of using SIP Trunking for your personal or business telecommunications.

Benefits of SIP Trunking

SIP Trunking can help individuals and businesses from high phone bills, costly long distance calling, incoming call charges and IT and maintenance expenses.

Moreover, when you use VoIP phones that operate on SIP Trunking, you enjoy scalability for your communication network. You can expand and modify your plan without hassle as they’re hardly any physical phone lines to worry about. In addition to this, VoIP systems run with SIP are highly reliable and can run smoothly on standard internet speed.

SIP Trunking is easier, faster and most importantly cheaper. That’s why many residences and businesses are switching to VoIP with SIP because it makes their communication experience better.

However, since there are so many SIP-enabled VoIP service providers on the market it can be difficult to decide on one VoIP service that suits all your business’s needs and still falls in your budget.

That’s where we come in. We’re a leading online VoIP reviews portal where we offer comprehensive reviews for the top business VoIP service providers on the market and compare them against each other so you can determine the best VoIP network for your business.

Moreover, once you’ve decided on your VoIP service provider, we can also help you set up your network with useful guides and tips.