Monday, October 30, 2006

Free Asterisk Book AsteriskTFOT

The book, "Asterisk The Future Of Telephony", Keeping up with the free as in beer philosophy, O'Reilly (released under the Creative Commons license) and available for download, read and use it in your Asterisk VOIP IP Telephony projects. I have dealt with Asterisk long before this book was written and I wish I had something like this handy at hand during all those experiments in VOIP. This book represents the work of Jim Van Meggelen, Jared Smith, and Leif Madsen over the past two years.
If you are even a bit interested in VOIP IP Telephony, I think you should add this to your arsenal of resources. Although it is written for Asterisk IPPBX, it covers most of the daya to day VOIP, IPPBX, IP Telephony, setup, NAT traversal, VOIP Codecs and VOIP protocol setups etc. Remember Asterisk IPPBX encompasses more than 100 years (VOIP) experiences due it's Open Source nature.

From the Preface of the book;
This is a book for anyone who is new to Asterisk™.
Asterisk is an open source, converged telephony platform, which is designed primarily to run on Linux. Asterisk combines over 100 years of telephony knowledge into a robust suite of tightly integrated telecommunications applications. The power of Asterisk lies in its customizable nature, complemented by unmatched standards compliance. No other PBX can be deployed in so many creative ways. Applications such as voicemail, hosted conferencing, call queuing and agents, music on hold, and call parking are all standard features built right into the software. Moreover, Asterisk can integrate with other business technologies in ways that closed, proprietary PBXs can scarcely dream of. Asterisk can appear quite daunting and complex to a new user, which is why documentation is so important to its growth. Documentation lowers the barrier to entry and helps people contemplate the possibilities. Produced with the generous support of O’Reilly Media, Asterisk: The Future of Telephony was inspired by the work started by the Asterisk Documentation Project. We have come a long way, and this book is the realization of a desire to deliver documentation which introduces the most fundamental elements of Asterisk-the things someone new to Asterisk needs to know. It is the first volume in what we are certain will become a huge library of knowledge relating to Asterisk.
This book was written for, and by, the Asterisk community.

Links;
Asterisk Documentation Project (One good resource for Asterisk, Please Join)
O'Reilly Asterisk (you can get updates errata etc from here)
To further interest you to check before you download here is the
TABLE of CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

1. A Telephony Revolution
VoIP: Bridging the Gap Between Traditional Telephony and Network Telephony
Massive Change Requires Flexible Technology
Asterisk: The Hacker's PBX
Asterisk: The Professional's PBX
The Asterisk Community
The Business Case
This Book

2. Preparing a System for Asterisk
Server Hardware Selection
Environment
Telephony Hardware
Types of Phone
Linux Considerations
Conclusion

3. Installing Asterisk
What Packages Do I Need?
Obtaining the Source Code
Compiling Zaptel
Compiling libpri
Compiling Asterisk
Installing Additional Prompts
Updating Your Source Code
Common Compiling Issues
Loading Zaptel Modules
Loading libpri
Loading Asterisk
Directories Used by Asterisk
Conclusion

4. Initial Configuration of Asterisk
What Do I Really Need?
Working with Interface Configuration Files
FXO and FXS Channels
Configuring an FXO Channel
Configuring an FXS Channel
Configuring SIP
Configuring Inbound IAX Connections
Configuring Outbound IAX Connections
Debugging
Conclusion

5. Dialplan Basics
Dialplan Syntax
A Simple Dialplan
Adding Logic to the Dialplan
Conclusion

6. More Dialplan Concepts
Expressions and Variable Manipulation
Dialplan Functions
Conditional Branching
Voicemail
Macros
Using the Asterisk Database (AstDB)
Handy Asterisk Features
Conclusion

7. Understanding Telephony
Analog Telephony
Digital Telephony
The Digital Circuit-Switched Telephone Network
Packet-Switched Networks
Conclusion

8. Protocols for VoIP
The Need for VoIP Protocols
VoIP Protocols
Codecs
Quality of Service
Echo
Asterisk and VoIP
Conclusion

9. The Asterisk Gateway Interface (AGI)
Fundamentals of AGI Communication
Writing AGI Scripts in Perl
Creating AGI Scripts in PHP
Writing AGI Scripts in Python
Debugging in AGI
Conclusion

10. Asterisk for the Über-Geek
Festival
Call Detail Recording
Customizing System Prompts
Manager
Call Files
DUNDi
Conclusion

11. Asterisk: The Future of Telephony
The Problems with Traditional Telephony
Paradigm Shift
The Promise of Open Source Telephony
The Future of Asterisk

A. VoIP Channels

B. Application Reference

C. AGI Reference

D. Configuration Files

E. Asterisk Command-Line Interface Reference

Index

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