Integrated voice and data communications overview

The author reviews architectures and traffic characteristics for voice and data communications, and addresses important issues in integrated voice and data communications. He discusses some possible methods of integrating voice and data and presents an example of implementing integrated voice and data communications. He considers ISDN (integrated services digital network) as a vehicle for supporting integrated services including voice and data as well as image and video. Although the concern is mainly with switched networks, some of the concepts discussed are applicable to both switched and special-services networks