Nov
I have read the excellent book Asterisk 1.6, Build feature-rich telephony systems with Asterisk by David Merel, Barrie Dempster and David Gomillion.
The book is inteended to anyone interested in bulding a telephony system using Asterisk and are 224 pages. The book claims that no preknowledge about opensource, Linux and Asterisk is required. I think it is a little bit hard to start without any of these knowledge. I would recommend to have basic Linux/Unix knowledge to be able to go through the installation part.
It starts from the begining with introduction to Asterisk, brief telephony system introduction, installing Asterisk,configure Asterisk, creating dialplans. It continues with call logging, different pre-made Asterisk alternatives like trixbox/FreePBX, asterCRM and Case studies and ends with some hints that makes the life of an Asterisk admin easier.
I relly liked the book. When starting with no Asterisk knowledge the number of config files and parameter is overvelming and this book help the reader to penetrate that. The book walk through basic configuration and help to get your a Asterisk installation up and running. I like that it gives an overview of different things to consider when to start an Asterisk implementation and builds up a basic knowledge about the subject.
I appreciate the case studies where three different scenarios are described: Small office/home office, Small business and a hosted PBX.
The drawback of the book is that it just gives an introduction to the different topics. I would like to have a little bit deeper knowledge in some of the topics, for an example dialplans.
I would recommend the book to newbies to Asterisk, the book will help them to get started and boost their knowledge. It is possible to gain all the knowledge in the book by visiting different Asterisk forums, read documentation and so on but that will take much effort compared to read the book.
- To buy the book: Asterisk 1.6, Build feature-rich telephony systems with Asterisk
