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 9 Ratings

Asterisk is more than a toy - 2009-12-05
Reviewer Rating:
This book gave me the motivation to play with asterisk. It's a great toy, but capable of being much more in skilled hands. Had I reason to build a serious PBX this book gave me the background to do this.

The information is presented in a clear and logical format with a focus on the necessary concepts and then building your first configuration using the text configuration file. Also covered are options for hardware connectivity to the variety of physical interfaces that are avaialble and issues such as software vs hardware echo cancelling.

Security is covered as well as protocols used in internet telephony. With this background interconnection one asterisk box to another or to a service that supports the SIP protocol like skype or vonage is covered.

For the less geeky there is coverage of various turnkey asterisk packages with gui interfaces to get one up with a basic system quickly and without messing with text configuration files.

This book made playing with asterisk fun for me and it can be an essential resource for someone looking to roll their own pbx with ip or more traditional telephony.

Price is right - 2009-11-29
Reviewer Rating:
This book enumerates the functions and features of Asterisk, but does little to facilitate deep understanding. I can make the same positive comment about this book that I can about every other O'Reilly book that I own: it's cheap. If you want a good book, plan to pay $50-75 or more. Good, clear technical writing is very time consuming and sales volume is low. Therefore, good technical books are expensive.

Also, no need to study up on Asterisk. The easiest-to-use implementation out there for free is Trixbox CE. If you want an Asterisk switch you can live with, go Trixbox and buy a book on that particular build.

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 .

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