Asterisk: The Future of Telephony

by Jim Van Meggelen, Jared Smith, Leif Madsen

It may be a while before Internet telephony with VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) reaches critical mass, but there's already tremendous movement in that direction. A lot of organizations are not only attracted to VoIP's promise of cost savings, but its ability to move data, images, and voice traffic over the same connection. Think of a single Internet phone call can take information sharing to a whole new level. That's why many IT administrators and developers are actively looking to set up VoIP-based private telephone switching systems within the enterprise. The efficiency that network users can reach with it is almost mind-boggling. And cheap, if the system is built with open source software like Asterisk. There are commercial VoIP options out there, but many are expensive systems running old, complicated code on obsolete hardware. Asterisk runs on Linux and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment. And you can program it to your liking. Asterisk's flexibility comes at a price, it's not a simple system to learn, and the documentation is lacking. The Future of Telephony solves that problem by offering a complete roadmap for installing, configuring, and integrating Asterisk with existing phone systems. Our guide walks you through a basic dial plan step by step, and gives you enough working knowledge to set up a simple but complete system. What you end up with is largely up to you. Asterisk embraces the concept of standards-compliance, but also gives you freedom to choose how to implement your system. The Future of Telephony outlines all the options, and shows you how to set up voicemail services, call conferencing, interactive voice response, call waiting, caller ID, and more. You'll also learn how Asterisk merges voice and data traffic seamlessly across disparate networks. And you won't need additional hardware. For interconnection with digital and analog telephone equipment, Asterisk supports a number of hardware devices. Ready for the future of telephony? We'll help you hook it up.

Genres: Technology, Reference, Computers, Technical

380 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2005

Reviews

[Lauskin · Rating 5 out of 5]

El libro que marcó mi carrera, lo leí en 2010 y me enseñó las posibilidades del mundo VoIP. Ahora, a 17 años vista de la publicación de su segunda edición el mundo es completamente diferente. En su contexto una muy buena guía y manual de referencia sobre el proyecto VoIP que para mí, lo cambió todo.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent reference into establishing your own PBX system. It accurately and comprehensively explains the options and tradeoffs for internal and external communications.

As a side note, the extreme effort required to offer phone termination (bridge between voip and PSTN) as well as SMS means that for most non-PBX purposes, one would be better served by telecom as a service (e.g. Voxeo or Twilio).

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those of us who find a book more comfortable than a wiki.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

This gives great detail on how to install a VoIP system.

[Michael Babcock · Rating 4 out of 5]

helped me learn quite a bit about asterisk, and was the only book i really was able to find to learn asterisk. Good read if your looking to learn about asterisk.

[Aleksey Abramov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book for beginners.