IP | PBX | Key | VoIP Telephone Systems

It's here. Whethere you're looking for Metro-Ethernet or Ethernet Internet Access, you'll be happy find that it is available in Terre Haute.   Metro-E is a cost effective, big bandwidth solution that's suitable for small, medium, and large businesses and organizations including health care, local government, K-12 and higher education. 
 
Metro-E is available as a point-to-point or point-to-multipoint product.  The service is designed to transport converged services such as data, voice over IP, and video over IP.   It  provides speeds from 3Mbps up to 40Mbps or more - and easily scales without the need for additional circuist.  So, as business demands increase, it's easy to add capacity as needed. 

Product variations inlclude EIA, EPL, EVPL, ELAN and Metro-E.  This service provides symmetrical bandwidth, which means you have just as much upload speeds as download.  This is important for hosting services and application like ERP, VoIP, web, email, video conferencing,  etc.

Ethernet services can be configured to integrate with Layer 3 VPN or configured as a Layer 2 connection between two networks, effectively connecting them.  Bottom line, it's a cost effective, high performance way to tie together branch offices, factories, and muli-location offices. 

VoIP is an acronym for "Voice over Internet Protocol". The term VoIP may have different meanings based on the context that it's used in, whether or not it's a correct use of the term is another thing.  

In some cases, the term VoIP may refer to an alternative for phone service.  Think along the lines of Vonage, 8x8, Skype, and ooVoo.  These types of service are BYOB  - bring your own broadband. You can "use the service on any business broadband connection". The issue with that is that there's no way to control the quality of service on public Internet, so when call quality is poor, there's little you can do about it. These services may be acceptable for home use, but they're a far cry from the consistent and reliable service that a business needs to rely on. 

In the context of a business telephone system, "IP phone system" is another commonly used term. "IP" again being Internet protocol.  An IP, or VoIP, telephone system uses the data network - switches and CAT5 Ethernet wire infrastructure that the PCs use.  

This type of service delivery is "packet switched". Voice is packaged into data packets and sent along the same data network as email, web, and streaming media.  This actually makes for a very efficient use of physical resources.  The caveat is that all of this traffic is in contention with the other unless steps are taken to prioritize the traffic.  Measures must be taken to provide priority for voice traffic over other types of traffic. These rules are referred to as QoS,  and involve CoS, VLANs, and subnetting. 

Contrast that to traditional telephony, where the network and service delivery is "circuit switched". In a circuit switched environment, an end-to-end circuit is established to transport voice. In this scenario, there is a physical end-to-end connection established, whereby resources are dedicated for the duration of the call.