InterhackerspacePBX/Telephony Glossary

Telephony Glossary

Telephony is rife with acronyms and opaque product names, so here's a short list of the ones we have used in the initial discussion of the project:

Asterisk

Open source software for building PBX's. [1]

ERT

Emergency Roadside Telephone

FXO

Port for a POTS phone to plug into

IVR

Interactive Voice Response (voice menus... "press 1 for insults; press 2 for an argument")

PABX

Private automatic branch exchange

PBX

Private branch exchange, aka internal telephone network with extensions

PCI

Slot in PCs for installing peripherals like modems, graphics cards, FXO cards

POTS

Plain Old Telephone Service (analog)

PSTN

Public Switched Telephone Network

RPi

Raspberry Pi SOC

SOC

System-on-a-chip (small computer)

VoIP

Voice over Internet Protocol: digital phone calls over the net