An Analog Telephone Adapter, shortly known as ATA, is a device used to connect one or more traditional telephone instruments or fax machines with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) lines. An Analog Telephone Adapter basically makes a physical connection between a conventional phone or fax and a computer or an Ethernet gateway. The ATA usually comes with a VoIP and internet plan provider but it can also be purchased independently by the customer. The Analog Telephone Adapter makes voice calls and faxing over the broadband Internet possible without upgrading existing traditional telephony systems.
Voice calls and Faxes over the Internet are significantly cheaper than doing so over traditional phone lines. There is no compromise of any functionality and other features may still be included in VoIP plans.
The Analog Telephone Adapter allows the user to immediately take advantage of the low costs in making calls over the Internet. It also removes the need to get rid of existing phones and replace them with IP specialized phones. Moreover, ATAs are also generally cheaper than specialized digital VoIP phones which are capable of direct USB port or Ethernet gateway connectivity
The first type of Analog Telephone Adapters is called Foreign Exchange Station (FXS) to Universal Serial Bus (USB) Adapters. Such an ATA is a trouble-free device that has one or more RJ-11 jacks or FXS telephone ports. Each phone jack can connect a phone or a fax machine. This ATA has an output cable which is in turn plugged into the personal computer’s USB port. The computer becomes its means of connecting to the internet.
In this case, the ATA simply makes voice calls over the internet more convenient than using computer speakers and microphone or headsets; it does not directly interact with the VoIP server. The real analog-to-digital conversion is done by the computer software, generally known as the softphone, which needs to be installed in the computer to which the ATA is connected. This software is provided by the VoIP service providers. This software converts voice data to digital data packets transmittable over the internet.
The second type of Analog Telephone Adapters directly performs analog-to-digital voice conversion. As such, Analog Telephone Adapters of this type do not need a softphone for VoIP. It communicates directly with the VoIP server using protocols such as SIP (the most common protocol for ATAs), H.323, IAX or MGCP. Voice signals are encoded and decoded using GSM, A-law, u-law and other such voice codecs.
Physically, an FXS to Ethernet Gateway ATA has one or more standard telephone jacks to which conventional telephony equipment can be plugged in. Analog voice data is converted to digital data and transported through an RJ-45 cable which is connected to the Local Area Network through its direct connection to the Ethernet hub or switch.
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