[...]... 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 Definitive Guide is the third edition of what was formerly called Asterisk: The Future of Telephony We decided to change the name because Asterisk has been so wildly successful that it is no longer... solves the first two problems; entrepreneurs and the community are addressing the latter The Asterisk Community One of the compelling strengths of Asterisk is the passionate community that developed and supports it This community, led by the fine folks at Digium, is keenly aware of the cultural significance of Asterisk and has an optimistic view of the future One of the more powerful side effects of the. .. developed the wide acceptance it currently enjoys The openness of the Internet meant that anyone could afford to get involved So, everyone did The tens of thousands of minds that collaborated on the creation of the Internet delivered something that no corporation ever could have.‡ As with many other open source projects, such as Linux and so much of the critical software running the Internet, the development... voicemail was the hottest new technology, and data communications geeks and coders who helped build the Internet These people all share a common belief—that the telecommunications industry needs a proper revolution.# Asterisk is the catalyst Asterisk: The Hacker’s PBX Telecommunications companies that choose to ignore Asterisk do so at their peril The flexibility it delivers creates possibilities that the best... something will always be left out, because even the most feature-rich PBX will always fail to anticipate the creativity of the customer A small group of users will desire an odd little feature that the design team either did not think of or could not justify the cost of building, and, since the system is closed, the users will not be able to build it themselves If the Internet had been thusly hampered by... website called The Asterisk Documentation Assigned (TADA) and started writing down any documentation I could A couple of weeks later Jared Smith and I started talking, and started the Asterisk Documentation xxx | Preface Project (http://www.asteriskdocs.org), with the goal of writing an Asterisk book for the community That project became the basis of the first edition of this book, Asterisk: The Future... contributing to Asterisk We hope you enjoy the book! Preface | xxxiii CHAPTER 1 A Telephony Revolution First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win —Mahatma Gandhi When we first set out—nearly five years ago—to write a book about Asterisk, we confidently predicted that Asterisk would fundamentally change the telecommunications industry Today, the revolution we predicted is all... scarcely dream of This is because Asterisk is the ultimate hacker’s PBX The term hacker has, of course, been twisted by the mass media into meaning “malicious cracker.” This is unfortunate, because the term actually existed long before the media corrupted its meaning Hackers built the networking engine that is the Internet Hackers built the Apple Macintosh and the Unix operating system Hackers are also... next telecom system Do not fear; these are the good guys, and they’ll be able to build a system that’s far more secure than anything that exists today Rather than being constricted by the dubious and easily cracked security of closed systems, § Between the releases of Asterisk 1.2 and Asterisk 1.4, over 4,000 updates were made to the code in the SVN repository Between the releases of Asterisk 1.4 and... person toward the first edition of this book, Asterisk: The Future of Telephony, and set him loose In just a few hours of development (or longer, of course), companies can change the way they deliver products to customers, nonprofits can overhaul how their users interact with the services they offer, and individuals can learn to build a perfectly customized call-handling system for their mobile and home . Documentation lowers the barrier to entry and helps people contemplate the possibilities. Produced with the generous support of O’Reilly Media, Asterisk: The Definitive Guide is the third edition of what. Asterisk: The Definitive Guide, the images of starfish, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their. VoIP: Bridging the Gap Between Traditional and Network Telephony 2 The Zapata Telephony Project 2 Massive Change Requires Flexible Technology 3 Asterisk: The Hacker’s PBX 4 Asterisk: The Professional’s