Building Telephone Systems With Asterisk

While this book is "old" in terms of when it was first published for the computing world, but it is straight to the point. I bought it to investigate what I would need to do in order to setup a PBX for my small business. It's actually so straight to the point that I wasn't able to do much beyond the first couple of chapters because it pretty much requires you to have a machine that you can install software on and use to test and experiment with -- which I don't have yet. So if you're committed to getting going on an Asterisk PBX, this book would probably serve as a good resource to you.

I found this book very helpful. Sometimes it felt a little disorganized, but it did help me get off the ground with Asterisk. The free book from O'Reilly is also a great reference. All that being said, I would still purchase this book if I had it to do over.

When I first got this book I thought I had been ripped off ... $30 for a thin 160 pages ... Then I read it ... I was able to install an asterisk system build a dial plan ... connect with a remote service provider via PSTN and had a worldwide corporate phone system installed in 1 week.

If you are looking for a guide to getting your first Asterisk PBX up and running quickly, this is the book for you. It does assume some modest Linux skills but it will guide you from start to finish getting a working phone system up and running. For a more complete review, please visit: http://voipspeak.net/index.php?option=com_content & task=view & id=31 & Itemid=27

I have very little knowledge of Asterisk, but I am a Telecom Manager and Asterisk is one of the up and coming technologies that has the potential to change how voice communications are handled. This is a great guide for those how might not know that much about telecom but are interested in either setting up an Asterisk server for your business or home. After reading it I now have a much higher comfort level about the application, how to configure it and its general capabilities. Asterisk is open source software that runs on Linux that provides all of the features and functionality of a Private Branch Exchange (PBX)which is basically a telephone switch that businesses use to provide their telephone service. Asterisk is a free download with tremendous potential, it can allow you to build an Interactive Voice Response application which can interact with databases and provide responses based on keypad input (nearly everyone has used one of these when calling your bank or changing an airline reservation). You could also use it in your home and configure voice mail boxes for various family memebers and have other functionality which has only previously been available in a business setting. This book was written towards people how do not necessarily have either telecom or Linux experience. It provides a brief overview of the software and general telephony and then leads into the steps which are necessary to actually set the software up on a PC, it runs through all the steps which are necessary to get Asterisk up and running and the commands which are necessary to configure the various applications such as voice mail, which reside in Asterisk. The book also talks about Asterisk@Home which is a more user friendly installation and also gives the instructions necessary to configure Asterisk@Home for a home or small business. I would fully recommend this book to anyone looking at actually setting up an Asterisk server or anyone just interested in the capabilities of the application.