Asterisk -the future of telephony

by Jim Van Meggelen, Jared Smith, and Leif Madsen
[Download]

VoIP-4D Primer -Building Voice Infrastructure in Developing Regions

The VoIP-4D Primer is a free guide available in four major languages. The work is an effort to disseminate the use of telephony over the Internet in developing regions. The 40-page guide targets both technical and non-technical readers. The first part presents the essentials of telephony over the Internet. For those interested in the more technical details, hands-on guidelines and configuration files are included in the second part. The examples provide essential background to build your own low-cost telephony system.

For more information, click here.

Practical Guide - How to setup VoIP Infrastructure using AsteriskNOW

This practical tutorial is based on the AsteriskGUI available in Asterisk 1.4.x series. A new distribution known as AsteriskNOW, includes a straightforward installer and all the software packages for Asterisk production and development. Although the distribution is still in beta stage (beta5 in November 2007), it has been designed with a very clean interface and a very intuitive “wizard”.

[Download]

Practical Guide - How to setup an IP04 Asterisk IP­-PBX

This tutorial shows you how to set up 3 basic scenarios on the IP04 IP-­PBX. The IP04 is a tiny, full function Asterisk IP­PBX with 4 analogue ports. It retails for around $450 but can be potentially be built and deployed to developing regions for under $100. Configuration of the IP04 can be performed using just an analogue telephone ­ even a PC is optional! These exercises show just how easy Asterisk configuration can be on the IP04. Compared to commodity hardware (such a PC and PCI card), IP04 configuration is much easier.

[Download]

The IP04 Open telephony hardware for developing regions, The Free Telephony Project

Authors: David Rowe, Alberto Escudero-Pascual

This document describes the IP04, a low cost open hardware IP-PBX developed by the Free Telephony Project1 for developing regions. The IP04 is a tiny, full function Asterisk-based IP-PBX with 4 analogue ports. It retails for around $400 but can be potentially be built and deployed to developing regions for under $100.

The hardware design is free as in speech. Anyone is welcome to copy, modify, and improve the hardware design, just like open software. Open hardware offers exciting new possibilities, for example dramatic end-user cost reductions; the potential for local manufacture; customisation to support developing world conditions such as low power and local languages; and flexibility, for example integration of solar charge controller and WiFi chip sets.

[Download]

Making IP Telephony knowledge accessible, A pre-study of innovative approaches

by Alberto Escudero Pascual

The goal of this pre-study is to identify which technologies are there that can reduce the gap from newcomers to get started with VoIP and expand the existing community.
In this document we highlight three areas that you have looked into:
1. Specialized Asterisk software distributions including graphical configuration tools (The Asterisk GUI-friendly projects)
2. Installing Asterisk using virtualization (Asterisk & VMware)
3. Specialized PBX hardware - Asterisk Appliances

[Download]