ession routing purposes. AT&T's CIC is 0288. If The reduction in size of data, image, voice, someone at a pay telephone dials 1010288 or video files. This decreases the capacity and then the telephone number she is calling, needed to transmit files. the call is routed over the AT&T network. concatenation CIR (Committed Information Rate) The linking of channels in optical networks A term used in frame relay MPLS networks SO that voice or video is transmitted as one to indicate the speed of the transmission stream. This is done to ensure that there are guaranteed for a customer. See also MPLS. no breaks in the transmission. Glossary connectionless service telephone systems and computers can coor- The Internet protocol is connectionless. Each dinate sending call routing and account infor- packet travels through the network separately. mation to agents in contact centers. If there is congestion, packets are dropped. Packets are reassembled at their destination. CWDM (Coarse Wavelength-Division Multiplexing) contact center A multiplexing technology standard that Another term for automatic call distribution. enterprises and carriers deploy to connect The term contact center implies that call cen- corporate sites to public networks and to ters have the capability to respond to e-mail bring the capacity of fiber closer to residential and facsimile as well as voice calls. neighborhoods. It carries up to eight channels of traffic on a single fiber pair. convergence The use of one network for voice, data, and dark fiber video. Fiber-optic cables without any of the elec- cordless tronics (that is, multiplexers and amplifiers). Cordless telephones provide portability, Carriers can lay dark fiber and add SONET, mainly within homes and apartments. Gigabit Ethernet, and wavelength-division multiplexers later. core networks The portions of carrier and enterprise net- DCE (Data Circuit-terminating works that carry the highest percentage of Equipment) traffic, and where switches and routers con- A communications device that connect