keith
07-31-2008, 12:10 PM
Asterisk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterisk_(PBX)) is an open source/free software implementation of a telephone private branch exchange (PBX) originally created in 1999 by Mark Spencer of Digium. Like any PBX, it allows a number of attached telephones to make calls to one another, and to connect to other telephone services including the public switched telephone network (PSTN).
I personally use Asterisk at TPS for testing and quick development work on. We like it because of the ease of use and lack of licensing usually associated with traditional telephony systems.
Just like Linux, Asterisk is only the core of a telephony system. Similar to Linux Distribution, Asterisk also has it's own Distributions. AsteriskNow! is made by Digium, Trixbox by Fonality and Pdx-in-a-flash! are 3 of the most popular distributions of Asterisk I have seen for standard x86 machines.
(You can also put Asterisk on various router models as well, but that's another topic)
The most popular one, Trixbox is now owned by one of the biggest Asterisk players in the industry, Fonality. While alot of critics have moved away from Trixbox because of this, I still suggest it as being the best and the easiest to switch from using someone elses distribution to rolling your own system. I hear they are changing up the UI though, so this advice may be outdated.
One of my favorite sites to learn from is Nerdvittles: http://www.nerdvittles.com.
Get familiar with this resource. They help greatly with simple stuff like Howto Choose a VoIP provider and many other things like that.
If you want to get started, here's a basic newbies primer:
http://nerdvittles.com/index.php?p=201
Here's one specifically for Trixbox:
http://myasterisk.co.nz/2007/12/12/trixbox-22-vfx-for-dummies-from-install-to-calling-in-less-than-thirty-minutes/
While we are not in the business of Asterisk support, if you need any help with Asterisk to WAVE specific configuration steps I will be glad to assist you in any way I can.
I personally use Asterisk at TPS for testing and quick development work on. We like it because of the ease of use and lack of licensing usually associated with traditional telephony systems.
Just like Linux, Asterisk is only the core of a telephony system. Similar to Linux Distribution, Asterisk also has it's own Distributions. AsteriskNow! is made by Digium, Trixbox by Fonality and Pdx-in-a-flash! are 3 of the most popular distributions of Asterisk I have seen for standard x86 machines.
(You can also put Asterisk on various router models as well, but that's another topic)
The most popular one, Trixbox is now owned by one of the biggest Asterisk players in the industry, Fonality. While alot of critics have moved away from Trixbox because of this, I still suggest it as being the best and the easiest to switch from using someone elses distribution to rolling your own system. I hear they are changing up the UI though, so this advice may be outdated.
One of my favorite sites to learn from is Nerdvittles: http://www.nerdvittles.com.
Get familiar with this resource. They help greatly with simple stuff like Howto Choose a VoIP provider and many other things like that.
If you want to get started, here's a basic newbies primer:
http://nerdvittles.com/index.php?p=201
Here's one specifically for Trixbox:
http://myasterisk.co.nz/2007/12/12/trixbox-22-vfx-for-dummies-from-install-to-calling-in-less-than-thirty-minutes/
While we are not in the business of Asterisk support, if you need any help with Asterisk to WAVE specific configuration steps I will be glad to assist you in any way I can.