Concepts of ISDN

• Integrated Services refers to ISDN's ability to deliver at minimum two simultaneous connections, in any combination of data, voice, video, and fax, over a single line. Multiple devices can be attached to the line, and used as needed. That means an ISDN line can take care of most people's complete communications needs at a much higher transmission rate, without forcing the purchase of multiple analog phone lines.

• Digital refers to its purely digital transmission, as opposed to the analog transmission of plain old telephone service (POTS). Use of an analog telephone modem for Internet access requires that the Internet service provider's (ISP) modem converts the digital content to analog signals before sending it and the user's modem then converts those signals back to digital when receiving. When connecting with ISDN there is no digital to analog conversion.

• Network refers to the fact that ISDN is not simply a point-to-point solution like a leased line. ISDN networks extend from the local telephone exchange to the remote user and includes all of the telecommunications and switching equipment in between.

The purpose of the ISDN is to provide fully integrated digital services to the users. These services fall under three categories: bearer services, supplementary services and teleservices.

Integrated Services Digital Network is a telephone system network. Prior to the ISDN, the phone system was viewed as a way to transport voice, with some special services available for data. The key feature of the ISDN is that it integrates speech and data on the same lines, adding features that were not available in the classic telephone system. There are several kinds of access interfaces to the ISDN defined: Basic Rate Interface (BRI), Primary Rate Interface (PRI) and Broadband-ISDN (B-ISDN).

ISDN is a circuit-switched telephone network system, that also provides access to packet switched networks, designed to allow digital transmission of voice and data over ordinary telephone copper wires, resulting in better voice quality than an analog phone. It offers circuit-switched connections (for either voice or data), and packet-switched connections (for data), in increments of 64 kbit/s. Another major market application is Internet access, where ISDN typically provides a maximum of 128 kbit/s in both upstream and downstream directions (which can be considered to be broadband speed, since it exceeds the narrowband speeds of standard analog 56k telephone lines). ISDN B-channels can be bonded to achieve a greater data rate, typically 3 or 4 BRIs (6 to 8 64 kbit/s channels) are bonded.

ISDN should not be mistaken for its use with a specific protocol, such as Q.931 whereby ISDN is employed as the transport, data-link and physical layers in the context of the OSI model. In a broad sense ISDN can be considered a suite of digital services existing on layers 1, 2, and 3 of the OSI model. ISDN is designed to provide access to voice and data services simultaneously.

However, common use has reduced ISDN to be limited to Q.931 and related protocols, which are a set of protocols for establishing and breaking circuit switched connections, and for advanced call features for the user. They were introduced in the late 1980s.

In a videoconference, ISDN provides simultaneous voice, video, and text transmission between individual desktop videoconferencing systems and group (room) videoconferencing systems.