Chapter 18. External Services

Correct me if I’m wrong—the gizmo is connected to the flingflang connected to the watzis, watzis connected to the doo-dad connected to the ding dong.

—Patrick B. Oliphant

Asterisk is pretty nifty all by itself, but one of the most powerful, industry-changing, revolutionary aspects of Asterisk is the sheer number of wonderful ways it may be connected to external applications and services. This is truly unprecedented in the world of telecom. In this chapter we’ll explore some popular services and applications that you can integrate with your Asterisk system. Here are some of the external connections we’ve decided to cover (Asterisk has more, but our editor is waiting for us to finish this edition, which is already the largest Asterisk book yet):