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)

• 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.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 7 Ratings

Opening the door for the Asterisk revolution - 2009-02-01
Reviewer Rating:
Just a note, this book can be downloaded for free from OReilly online. Mr. OReilly also has an interesting blog about the future of distributing books this way using download statistics from this book. I am a bit old fashioned when it comes to reading, so I opted for the printed version. But it is also nice to be able to search the appendix on channels and applications in the PDF version.

As the authors openly admit, the hardest part about this book is to decide what 'not' to include in the book. Asterisk's flexibility and almost unlimited potential are intimidating even for the most motivated. After hearing about Asterisk a few years ago, I was surprised to find so few books on the topic and many scattered around information. Coming from a Cisco background, I was getting spoiled with shining books and a vendor-driven learning paths.

At the time, after read up on user groups, blogs, man pages, and various sources, I was able to get the phones to register and ring. This was very cool for the first 5 minutes, but the system lacked all the standard features that would make it useful. I then spend the next few days trying to get voicemail, conference bridge, auto attendant, and Free World Dialing to work. Long story short, the system stayed as a science project for me while I move on to Cisco, Sipura, SipX, and other products in the next few years. I remain enthusiastic about Asterisk and its potential so I continued to watch for any new publications. Unfortunately, Voip-info.org still remained to be the place with the most Asterisk information, but I often find myself being frustrated by the lack of organization and works-for-me-but-use-it-at-your-own-risk code examples.

If I remember correctly, the publication date of this book was pushed back for almost a year, it remained on my watch list on Amazon mostly because it is from the trusted OReilly. I was disappointed by the lack of detail examples in the first edition so my expectation was low, it sat on the shelf for months before I start to read it a few weeks ago. Boy was this an improvement from the first edition! It starts to fill in gaps for me right away and by the end of chapter 5, I feel it is already worth the money paid for the book because it has enough information for a basic working system. The concepts are clearly explained and the codes are simple and to the point. It does not attempt to cover all the information because it cant, but it lays down a nice foundation for you to build on. I honestly wish I had this book a few years ago.

Like anything that is worth learning, you need to spend time and energy if you want to be good at Asterisk. What this book did was to lessen the slope of the learning curve. I highly recommend this book, if nothing else, download the PDF version so you can leverage the nice appendix on channels and applications at the end.

Mandatory readings if you are interested in the future of telecom - 2009-05-29
Reviewer Rating:
The book explains the broad context of OpenSource telecom.
After this broad picture the reader is taken into Asterisk as a product.
I can be used as a "student" manual in training sessions or in self study.

Beginners and intermiedia can learn from this book, reference for the rest of us - 2009-05-11
Reviewer Rating:
I bought the first iteration of this book a few years back. Asterisk has certainly changed quite a bit in that time. This book serves as a great reference for the past and sheds some light on what is coming next. I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in trying out Asterisk or simply wants a good desk reference on-hand for syntax.

Great book! A must have for all serious asterisk users - 2009-05-11
Reviewer Rating:
Great book! A must have for all serious asterisk users. Contains all you will need to know about asterisk 1.4 .

Asterisk review - 2009-04-05
Reviewer Rating:
Great book, well written and serves both as an instructional guide and as a reference book. Fortunately, AsteriskNow has been released so the hard core details of doing an Asterisk install have been masked but you'll still need this book to understand how to create and maintain your dial plan.

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