Product Description

This bestselling book is now the standard guide to building phone systems with Asterisk, the open source IP PBX that has traditional telephony providers running scared! Revised for the 1.4 release of the software, the new edition of "Asterisk: The Future of Telephony" reveals how you can save money on equipment and support, and finally be in control of your telephone system. If you've worked with telephony in the past, you're familiar with the problem: expensive and inflexible systems that are tuned to the vendor's needs, not yours. Asterisk isn't just a candle in the darkness, it's a whole fireworks show. Because Asterisk is so powerful, configuring it can seem tricky and difficult.This book steps you through the process of installing, configuring, and integrating Asterisk with your existing phone system. You'll learn how to write dialplans, set up applications including speech synthesis and voice recognition, how to script Asterisk, and much more - everything you need to design a simple but complete system with little or no Asterisk experience, and no more than rudimentary telecommunications knowledge. The book includes: a new chapter on managing/administering your Asterisk system; a new chapter on using Asterisk with databases; coverage of features in Asterisk 1.4; a new appendix on dialplan functions; a simplified installation chapter; new simplified SIP configuration, including examples for several popular SIP clients (soft phones and IP telephones); and, revised chapters and appendicies reviewed and updated for the latest in features, applications, trends and best-practices.Asterisk is revolutionizing the telecom industry, due in large part to the way it gets along with other network applications. While other PBXs are fighting their inevitable absorption into the network, Asterisk embraces it. If you need to take control of your telephony systems, move to Asterisk and see what the future of telecommunications looks like.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #230958 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• 602 pages

About the Author
Jim Van Meggelen is President and CTO of Core Telecom Innovations, a Canadian-based provider of open-source telephony solutions. He has over fifteen years of enterprise telecom experience, for such companies as Nortel, Williams and Telus, and has has extensive knowledge of both legacy and VoIP equipment from manufacturers such as Nortel, Cisco and Avaya.

Jim was the architect of two of the world's largest managed enterprise voice networks; each solution serving roughly twenty-thousand users in more than one-thousand communities across Canada, providing telecommunications in five different languages, through six time zones, administered completely from a central location. These networks pioneered the use of extensive automation and database control in a branch voice network - functionalities not generally available in proprietary telecommunications systems. Jim has now moved on from the world of proprietary telecom, and is commited to open-source telephony.

Jim is one of the principal contributors to the Asterisk Documentation Project, and is co-author of the bestselling O'Reilly book, Asterisk: The Future of Telephony. He enjoys teaching, public speaking, improvisational acting, and writing.

Jim lives in Toronto with his wife and three children.

Jared Smith is a long time member of the Asterisk community, and a co-founder of the Asterisk Documentation Project. Jared has over a decade of systems administration and programming experience, along with several years of professional telephony and voice-over-IP experience. As the architect of one of the world's largest Asterisk installations, he has a wealth of hands-on Asterisk knowledge. Jim Van Meggelen is President and CTO of Core Telecom Innovations, a Canadian-based provider of open-source telephony solutions. He has over fifteen years of enterprise telecom experience, for such companies as Nortel, Williams and Telus, and has extensive knowledge of both legacy and VoIP equipment from manufacturers such as Nortel, Cisco and Avaya. Jim is one of the principal contributors to the Asterisk Documentation Project. Leif Madsen first took an interest in Asterisk while attempting to find a voice conferencing solution for him and his friends. After someone suggested trying Asterisk, the obsession began. Wanting to contribute and be involved with the community, and noticing the lack of Asterisk documentation, he co-founded the Asterisk Documentation Project.

Leif Madsen first took an interest in Asterisk while attempting to find a voice conferencing solution for him and his friends. After someone suggested trying Asterisk, the obsession began. Wanting to contribute and be involved with the community, and noticing the lack of Asterisk documentation, he co-founded the Asterisk Documentation Project.

Customer Reviews

So full of holes
The gaping holes in this book raise more question than it answers. The book attempts a high level overview and a lower level drill down on functionality and configuration - i.e. a user guide. But as a user guide it has so many loose ends. Technical documents should be precise and complete, or at least have a critical mass of information to cover all but the most exceptional circumstances. This book falls way short...just like Asterisk does when it comes to CTI. And as for the overview; I am all for open source but all too often its proponent's sense of moral high ground seeps into a technical evaluation. Asterisk works but it is very rough at the edges, it has some major gaps, and it is open to debate whether if it would exist if it were not free (I'm sure devotees will cry "heretic" at my blasphemy). However the authors approach to asterisk has a feel of "sacred cow" about it. Copyright prevents me from including quotes here, but in contradiction to some of the statements raised in the book I would like to say firstly a. Asterisk is not a programming language (at least not one from the last 20 years) and b. immersing oneself in its code (a la some holy baptism) reveals more frailties than subtleties.
The bottom line: the editorial is contentious to say the least and as for the technicals, I felt like I should have been paid for proofing it.