New or novice users my find this basic glossary useful when using their Asterisk VOIP, a few telephone industry acronyms

CDR: Call Data Records or Call Detail Records.  These are logs of calls that have passed through the phone system.

GUI: Usually pronounced “gooey”,  Acronym for Graphical User Interface, the graphical administration software used to manipulate the phone system

Inbound call: This is a call from a regular telephone number to your PBX. Also referred to as Origination

ITSP:  Acronym for Internet Telephony Service Provider. This is a company that allows calls to and from ‘normal’ telephone numbers (PSTN)

NGN: Acronym for Non Geographic Numbers, such as 0845 in the UK

Outbound call: This is a call from your VOIP PBX to a regular telephone number. Also referred to as Termination

PBX: This stands for Private Branch Exchange, it is an old fashioned term for a phone system

PSTN: Public Switched Telephone Network. This is a term used to described the ‘normal’ telephone network. Non VOIP landline and mobile/cell telephone numbers.

SIP: A communication protocol for phones, a language to make phones and phone systems, talk to each other

Trunk: A link to another phone system or call provider. For example you would have a ‘trunk’ to your call provider (ITSP). Your system would send VOIP calls down the trunk to your call provider, they would send the call to it’s destination (a landline or mobile)