SIP trunking lets you add phone lines that bypass the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and use VoIP instead. SIP stands for Session Initiation Protocol, while trunking refers to an aggregation of multiple phone lines. Many businesses are moving to SIP trunking and away from traditional telephony to benefit from advantages such as quick provisioning, low costs, and no equipment to procure or maintain. Zentrunk is Plivo’s SIP trunking service.
You can create and manage outbound and inbound trunks from the Plivo console. The Zentrunk menu is the fifth icon on the console menu. When you click it, you’ll see an overview screen that gives you quick instructions on creating trunks.
Following the Overview submenu are choices for Outbound Trunks and Inbound Trunks. Under each, you can see a list of existing trunks and, as on the overview screen, there’s a button to create new ones.
Clicking on a trunk in the list brings up details about it. Here, for example, is what you might see for an outbound trunk.
You can modify trunk details and settings from this page, or delete a trunk you no longer use. The settings are covered in detail in our documentation.
You can get details about inbound trunks the same way by clicking on an item in the Inbound Trunks list.
If you want to set up a new trunk, our documentation guides you through the process and explains all of the fields and settings.
Moving down, the Other Settings menu brings up a screen that lets you set up geo permissions, which you can enable to help curb fraud.
Another Other Settings menu page lets you consent to Plivo storing and accessing logs and media packet capture files, which we can use to debug call quality and DTMF issues.
The penultimate menu choice, Logs, displays a log of outbound and inbound SIP calls. Clicking on a log entry displays a Message Details popup that gives you information about the call.
Finally, the pricing menu page gives you the costs for calls and phone number rental in every country in which Plivo supports SIP trunking.
Step right up for another tour
That’s a whirlwind tour through the Zentrunk features on the Plivo console. We’ve got similar looks for the Voice, Messaging, Lookup, and Phone Numbers menus.
