This book shows how to build a telephony system for your home or business using the free and open source application, Asterisk. 'Building a Telephony System with Asterisk' takes you step-by-step through the process of installing and configuring Asterisk. It shows you how to make a deployment plan, and how to create a dial plan.

The book also presents example configurations for using Asterisk in three different scenarios: for small and home offices, small businesses, and Hosted PBX.

With an engaging style and excellent way of presenting information, this book makes a complicated subject very easy to understand.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 10 Ratings

Too simplistic - 2006-12-03
Reviewer Rating:
This is a good book for ASterisk/VoIP beginners only. I was expecting much more than this. It was written in a very simplistic way, which is good for beginners no question. It doens't provide any form of Troubleshooting, even for the most common known problems (example: NAT)

Slightly outdated, but straight to the point - 2008-04-29
Reviewer Rating:
While this book is "old" in terms of when it was first published for the computing world, but it is straight to the point. I bought it to investigate what I would need to do in order to setup a PBX for my small business. It's actually so straight to the point that I wasn't able to do much beyond the first couple of chapters because it pretty much requires you to have a machine that you can install software on and use to test and experiment with -- which I don't have yet. So if you're committed to getting going on an Asterisk PBX, this book would probably serve as a good resource to you.

It's good for what it is. - 2006-11-18
Reviewer Rating:
Don't go about thinking this is a book for someone who wants to know what Asterisk is all about. The book is very specific to business applications and it does not treat more than a few configurations and case studies. It's very understandable, but it's not a book to read if you want to understand PBX design.

Telephony Systems with Asterisk - 2007-08-02
Reviewer Rating:
I was hoping that this book would be more specific. I needed better real world examples of how to build a workable dial plan. While there were numerous examples, this book fell painfully short in teaching the theory of context location. An example is on page 77 where the author states
"We simply place each handset into one of two contexts, based upon what number we want them to be able to dial." Which configuration files contain the contexts that we need to place the extensions into? There are other similar examples. What this author should have done is detail every configuration file involved showing exactly what was happening and where. Now, I understand there are more that one flavor of dial plan. However, statements as shown above aren't even close to what is expected of a subject matter expert. I give it a 3 because it is of help to beginners but it won't get the job done standing alone..

Good Reference - 2007-01-11
Reviewer Rating:
I found this book very helpful. Sometimes it felt a little disorganized, but it did help me get off the ground with Asterisk. The free book from O'Reilly is also a great reference. All that being said, I would still purchase this book if I had it to do over.

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