I'm enjoying the book and learning a lot from it, but this newest edition has some editing problems, such as typos:

Page 99: "providers may insteadSession Initiation Protocol" - and I don't know enough about the subject yet to figure out what they meant to say

and logical errors:

Page 71: "if you want to build an IP-only configuration, you can skip to the section on configuring SIP." - but if you do, expect to be coming back to this page because you'll have skipped over some important stuff and will have no idea what's going on

But these are comparatively minor problems with an otherwise great book.

This asterisk title is not for the faint hearted, assuming you have a working knowledge of linux and not afraid to jump in to some command line configuration. That said, there is some great explanation for basic set up to advanced features and to hook up to various VoIP providers.

From my perspective I was hoping for more details such as configuring time conditions for holidays and things of that nature, so I felt the book stopped before it covered topics I wanted. For what it does to, it does it well with detailed examples and descriptions as to why things work they do.

Don't look for this title to be a novice walk through guide, but if you want some good reference for setting up your own small to large business installation having this book on hand is a good idea.

I was looking to this book to gain an overview of Asterisk. As is usually the case with O' Reilly books, this one did not disappoint. I would definitely recommend this to anybody who is starting to explore Asterisk.

Additionally, there are references and details useful for continuing your understanding of this wonderful platform. There is a lot of information that can get you started with a hands-on Asterisk experience.

This is a very good book well suitable to even beginners. contents are explained very well. I made my asterisk system work by referring this book.

The asterisk software has progressed substantially, but worse, the organization of what's important and what's not makes this book hold the distinct honor of being in the top five worst books by O'Reilly Press.

Its a great book to learn Asterisk from the very beging, it goes trought the concept of telephony to creating a campaign.

Its a great book for understanding, setting up and administration of Asterisk as a PBX, it doesnt go futher this.

The down side is for the very very beginners, you should at least know the basics of telephony systems and to be a linux administrator.

But its a must if you are planning to install an Asterisk system.

This book really isn't all that great and leaves many a stone unturned for novice and professional alike, but I'll give it three stars anyway just because you can legally download an electronic copy for free right from the "Support" section of the main Asterisk website.

If you want a book that's going to explain how to configure VoIP hardware that isn't sold by Digium, try "Switching to VoIP" and just stick to the online docs and sample config comments for Asterisk.

This book really isn't all that great and leaves many a stone unturned for novice and professional alike, but I'll give it three stars anyway just because you can legally download an electronic copy for free right from the "Support" section of the main Asterisk website.

This book, typically enough for O'Reilly, is a wonderful overview of PBX design with Asterisk. While it does not treat the specifics enough to make a useful configuration straight from the book (it's not a "cookbook", in other words), it does give many ideas as to the capabilities of Asterisk. If you want to learn how to design your own PBX with asterisk (and you want to do it YOUR way), then start here. If you need to get the theory of PBX design down, start here. If you want a quick solution, then this is a great companion.

This book, typically enough for O'Reilly, is a wonderful overview of PBX design with Asterisk. While it does not treat the specifics enough to make a useful configuration straight from the book (it's not a "cookbook", in other words), it does give many ideas as to the capabilities of Asterisk. If you want to learn how to design your own PBX with asterisk (and you want to do it YOUR way), then start here. If you need to get the theory of PBX design down, start here. If you want a quick solution, then this is a great companion.

This book makes a lot of assumptions. Such as, you'll be using ZAP channels. If you are using SIP and/or IAX only, you'll quickly find yourself lost trying to follow the examples since a critical part of the setup is done in zapata.conf (i.e. a useless file for SIP/IAX only deployments). If you aren't using ZAP and you skip that part of the chapter (like I did), you'll pull out hair you didn't know you had trying to get the example configs to work. Likewise, the example builds out even further in the next chapter about extensions.conf, riddled with more ZAP configuration with a smattering of SIP examples. And if you are looking for IAX config examples you can forget it. Indeed it seems that SIP and IAX were after thoughts in this book.

If you are looking to setup a more traditional PBX using hardware line cards and PRIs, then this book is for you. Otherwise, keep looking.

I bought this book because I thought that having a small PBX-type system for my home/office would allow me to route faxes to my fax machine, provide voicemail to replace the limited answering machine, and auto attendant menus to route calls to 1 of 3 extensions that I would be able to configure. I saw a solution that would divide business and personal calls and also filter and perhaps stop once and for all those evil telemarketing calls.

In reading the book and doing a little research I learned that my goals were modest indeed for what the system is capable of!

While the idea is to provide a business-level PBX with inexpensive hardware, the same thing can be used as a killer phone appliance for the home or small office.

Even though I am about a quarter of the way into it, I can tell you that this book is one of the best written technical guides I have ever read. It's easy to read and chock-full of practical information that considers several types of users in it's presentation.

Don't expect to be a beginner and have an easy time of understanding how to install and configure an Asterisk PBX. Even for those with extensive computer experience there are a number of new terms, concepts, and technologies to learn. But if you have the interest and time to spend, you will be rewarded in taking full control of your phone system and be able to expand that control to home automation and other functions limited only by your imagination and programming skill.

I think Asterisk is going to turn into a household name at some point and skills learned today could turn into a career tomorrow.

Asterisk IS the future of telephony. I have been wanting to dive into the Asterisk world for over a year now, but never had the time until now. I have very limited telephony experience, and what little I know is from working on an old AT&T definity system, in a fairly passive role i.e. watching someone else do all the really cool stuff. Unfortunately, peons like myself weren't allowed to muck around on the PBX's. Lucky for me, Asterisk doesn't care who you are, you are encouraged to muck, and this book is an excellent place to begin.

Asterisk, The Future of Telephony, walks you through a brief history of telephony, and the technologies that have defined the industry since the dawn of time (more or less). The book is entirely self contained, and assumes very little previous telephony knowledge on the part of the reader. Aside from the AGI section, where some programming experience is taken for granted, anyone with basic linux admin skills should be able to read this book, and walk away with a strong Asterisk foundation to build upon.

The book is divided into 11 chapters which cover the full gamut of Asterisk's basic functionality. From preparing, installing, configuring and using an Asterisk system to writing customized scripts, connecting to VoIP gateways, and blocking telemarketers. If you need to do get something done, Asterisk is the PBX for you.

When working with open source tools, you get used to the phrase "that's really cool", and while working with Asterisk, that phrase comes up even more than usual. Every time I got through a chapter, I would have dozens of new ideas that I wanted to implement on my server and play with. I must have bored some of my colleagues to death with my "This is awesome..." speeches, but I don't think I was overstating matters at all. Asterisk really is awesome, and if the PBX big boys aren't worried, they probably should be.

If you are looking to setup a bunch of extensions in your house, leverage the power of VoIP, add capacity to your legacy PBX at the office, or do something entirely new, then this book is an excellent starting place and resource. My inner geek is very happy with the book, and I can easily recommend it to anyone w/even a passing interest in Asterisk.

Are you new to Asterisk? If you are, then this book is for you! Authors Jim Van Meggelen, Jared Smith and Leif Madsen, have written an outstanding book that is for those who are familiar with basic Linux administration, networking, and other IT disciplines.

Van Meggelen, Smith and Madsen, begin by providing some background about how Asterisk is going to change the world of telecom. Then, they cover some of the engineering considerations you should have in mind when designing a telecommunications system. The authors continue by covering the obtaining, compiling and installation of Asterisk. In addition, they describe the initial configuration of Asterisk. The authors also introduce the heart of Asterisk--the dialplan. Then, the authors discuss some of the more important technologies in use in the Public Telephone Network. Next, they discuss Voice over IP. Next, the authors introduce one of the more amazing components, the Asterisk Gateway Interface. Then, they briefly cover the features and functions of Asterisk. Finally, they predict a future where open source telephony completely transforms and industry desperately in need of a revolution.

This excellent book is the realization of a desire from the authors to deliver documentation which introduces the most fundamental elements of Asterisk--the things someone new to Asterisk needs to know. In other words, this book was written for, and by, the Asterisk community alone.

Jim Van Meggelen, Jared Smith & Leif Madsen's Asterisk: The Future Of Telephony focuses on the open source application Asterisk, which allows for flexible dial plans to support all kinds of telephony applications, from analogs and trunks to VoIP services from standard providers. Learn how to use Asterisk to set up dialplans, applications, speech synthesis and more with a guide written by Asterisk's original creator and maintainer: you can't get more authoritative than this!

Right off the bat: this book is -not- meant to be all things to all people. If you're already well-versed in VoIP, then there's a plethora of reference material available on the web, and this book may not be something you want.

If, on the other hand, you've tried to get started with Asterisk, and things just aren't clicking, and you find that the other documentation available -- including the "Yellow book" that preceded this one -- doesn't stack up, this is IT.

With informative, well-documented steps, the authors lead you through the process of becoming familiar with VoIP, and Asterisk in particular. They take you through the creation of such arcane files as your extensions.conf, sip.conf, zapata.conf and zaptel.conf, explaining what goes where, and why. They don't shy away from advanced topics, either: there's a chapter on on AGI (the Asterisk Gateway Interface), lots of juicy reference stuff on commands, etc., in the appendices... this book is worth twice what it's selling for. And, no, I'm not taking kickbacks.

I've tried for months to wrap my head around Asterisk -- and I come from both a telecom and Linux background, and it just wasn't clicking. A week with this book, and I now have a solid foundation on which to base going forward.

[Note: there's another O'Reilly book, "Switching to VoIP", that is also very informative, and has lots of tips and tricks. It's a nice companion book to this one, but this is -the- book you need if you're having trouble getting started, or simply want a better understanding of Asterisk's goings-on.]

The first thing of note with this book is that the appendixes are almost as long as the book itself. In this case it is a good thing. The appendixes contain all the detail reference you need to make Asterisk really work right. Asterisk is an open-source private PBX/VOIP software product. With the software and the addition of a couple of PBX cards to your computer you can setup your own telephony system. Asterisk supports voicemail, multiple lines, call-forwarding and everything else you think of when you think about a telephony system. The primary problem with Asterisk has been the difficulty of getting good documentation. This book resolves that problem as the authors walk the reader through everything everything they need to know to set up an Asterisk server. The book does not provide information on the many types of telephone hardware and how to setup a multi-line phone or similar equipment nor is that the intent of the authors. This is a book on the Asterisk software system only and it does an excellent job of explaining the details of the software. With very little documentation available on Asterisk this is a very welcome manual and a recommended read for anyone interested in using Asterisk to set up their own telephony solution.

I've been an Asterisk integrator for about three years and I still learned a great deal from reading this book! Like the many other O'Reilly books I have, this book provides and excellent balance between a reference and users' guide, so, I use it and the web to further my understanding of the program. And, even though Asterisk is a moving target, the authors obviously are involved enough with the community to be able to produce this very timely guide.

In our consulting practice, we run into many people looking for an effortless and highly scalable solution. While asterisk is a very flexible component in such an architecture, don't expect this book alone to teach you every thing you need to build and operate such a solution. No book could possibly tell you everything, but this is an excellent reference for getting started, maintaining, or upgrading, an existing system.

I have been a member of the Asterisk community for well over a year. In that time, I have seen some 100,000+ e-mails posted to the Asterisk-Users mailing list. If this book was available a year ago and was required reading BEFORE posting to the list, that number would be cut to less than 10,000.

Simply put, I feel that this book covers %90 of the material that users (mostly new) typically have problems with. I only wish it was available when I started. It is much better than wandering through the wiki endlessly, perusing mailing list archives for hours at a time, and struggling with the provided Asterisk documentation.

A year later, do I still find this book useful? Yes, but not as much. The worlds of Linux, telephony, and new and advancing VoIP protocols are very complicated yet gracefully integrated in Asterisk. I only wish my mind could remember it all, and "Asterisk: The Future of Telephony" serves as an excellent reference for the times I don't.

Having no previous experience with Asterisk, I found this to be a very interesting and well-written book. Asterisk is an open-source telephony solution, allowing you great flexibility over your communication needs. This book is written for Asterisk newbies, it is not written for experienced Asterisk users. According to the preface, the authors believe that the major stumbling block for getting people to use Asterisk is the documentation. This book is designed to increase the documentation and make it easier to begin using Asterisk. I think the authors succeed admirably in this respect.

This book assumes you have a basic knowledge of Linux administration, but does not assume any Asterisk experience and does a good job reviewing basic telephony concepts (e.g. you don't need to know what a PBX is to use this book).

The authors take the reader through a simple Asterisk installation, including compilation, loading of directories, and dealing with updates. The authors continue this discussion by proceeding through an Asterisk configuration (including tips on debugging the application). Finally, there is a discussion on various Dialplan issues (which include voicemail). If that's all you're interested in reading, you'll have enough information to have Asterisk set up and configured. If you're interested in a little more information, the authors include some excellent material on telephony and VoIP. For the geek, the book includes a lot of very good documentation on the Asterisk Gateway Interface (AGI), which allows external programs to communicate with or control your Asterisk dialplan.

I found this to be a very interesting book, well written, and easy to read. I would highly recommend this book if you're new to Asterisk.

It's tough to find good docs for Asterisk. I had hoped that buying this book would have allowed me to set up and configure all the basic stuff, but instead I'm consulting the online info just as much as ever.

Although the bulk of people connecting remotely to an Asterisk box are probably wishing to do so from behind a NAT-enabled device on a DSL line or cable modem, this book sort of just assumes that you happen to have a T1 or something with a static IP. There's also no mention of analog telephone adapters or troubleshooting any of the many pitfalls that you will likely encounter.

Have you tried connecting to Asterisk through SIP? Expect difficulties; don't expect any help from this book.

This could have been a nice reference if the writer had chosen to fill at least twice as much paper. Only buy this if you know absolutely nothing at all about Asterisk and are just playing with it as a hobby.

The content has been summarized by a number of people on here already, but I want to add that this book is no "admin guide." It has some value if you are tinkering around, but a telecom book that tosses an important PBX service like SMDR (call accounting) under a catch-all chapter entitled "Asterisk for the Uber-Geek" is not the serious approach that a 40-hour/week PBX person needs.

What most annoyed me about this book is that there is no configuration information for setting up clients using a device like the IAXy2. Instead, under "Configuring Inbound IAX Connections," there's just configuration info for "Free World Dialup." Guess what guys, if I just wanted my ATAs to connect to FWD, I wouldn't need an Asterisk box!

I can't wait for something better to come along. Please don't be fooled by these other reviewers who are giving this pamphlet far too much credit.

In typical O'Reilly fashion, this is a very readable guide for installing and administering Asterisk, the open-source solution for Voice over IP that runs on Linux. Step-by-step instructions are given, which is very necessary in a very new product that is short on documentation. There are even a few chapters that discuss basic telephony technology and others that discuss where Voice over IP has been and where it may be going in the context of open source solutions such as Asterisk, so this is not just a dry boring instruction manual. I notice that Amazon does not have the table of contents available, so I show and describe that here:
Chapter 1 "A Telephony Revolution" is just an introduction to Voice over IP and how it differs from computer integrated telephony solutions of just a few years ago.
Chapter 2 "Preparing a System for Asterisk" is about selecting server hardware, telephony hardware, different types of phones, and Linux considerations.
Chapter 3 "Installing Asterisk" tells you what packages you will need, how to obtain the source code, and how to compile, install, and update your source code.
Chapter 4 "Initial Configuration of Asterisk" is about working with interface configuration files, FXO and FXS channels and their configuration, configuring SIP, and configuring inbound and outbound connections. Debugging issues are also raised.
Chapters 5 and 6 are about dialplans. This ranges from dialplan basics and syntax to adding logic to a dialplan. Also expressions and variable manipulation as well as dialplan functions are discussed. Finally, the Asterisk database is discussed. These two chapters are what I consider to be the meatiest part of the book.
Chapter 7 "Understanding Telephony" discusses general telephony technology. Both analog and digital systems are discussed. The digital circuit-switched telephone network and packet-switched networks are explained.
Similarly, chapter 8, "Protocols for VoIP" discusses the need for VoIP protocols, the protocols themselves, codecs, the concept of quality of service and echo, and finally how Asterisk fits into VoIP.
Chapter 9 is about the Asterisk Gateway Interface and how to write scripts for it in a variety of common languages. This is very interesting material for advanced users who enjoy programming.
Chapter 10 is about advanced concepts and includes details on Festival, call detail recording, customized system prompts, and call files.
Chapter 11, the final chapter, is about the future of telephony and how Asterisk might fit into that future.
There are several useful appendices in the back of the book on VoIP channels, an application reference, an AGI reference, a section on configuration files, and finally an Asterisk command-line interface reference.

I like how this book both walks you through setting up the system and programming it, but also has reference material at the end. That means that the book is a complete all-in-one source for Asterisk users.

This book is well written and illustrated. Definitely a good value for your dollar.