[top]What is analog telephone adaptor and how does it work?

An analog telephone adapter (ATA) provides an interface that allows you to use a standard telephone to communicate over an IP network such as the Internet. The name "analog telephone adapter" was originated by Cisco for their ATA-186. Other manufacturers use slightly different acronyms, but they essentially mean the same thing. An ATA-type device is a kind of computer that handles all of the tasks related to providing a telephone-line experience while talking over an IP network. This includes providing dial tone, understanding touch tones, authenticating to the VoIP provider, encoding your voice in a way that allows it to be transmitted over an IP network, decoding IP packets into voice, and so on. The ATA-type device will typically have a web server that will allow you to configure the device. Depending on whether the device is provided with a service provider or purchased from somewhere else, that web configuration may or may not be accessible or portions of the configuration may be restricted.