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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><title>Acknowledgments</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" type="text/css" /><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.69.1" /><link rel="start" href="index.html" title="Asterisk™: The Future of Telephony" /><link rel="up" href="asterisk-PREFACE.html" title="Preface" /><link rel="prev" href="asterisk-PREFACE-SECT-7.html" title="How to Contact Us" /><link rel="next" href="asterisk-CHP-1.html" title="Chapter 1. A Telephony Revolution" /></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Acknowledgments</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="asterisk-PREFACE-SECT-7.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">Preface</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="asterisk-CHP-1.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr /></div><div class="sect1" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a id="asterisk-PREFACE-SECT-8"></a>Acknowledgments</h2></div></div></div><p>Firstly, we have to thank our fantastic editor Michael Loukides, who
offered invaluable feedback and found incredibly tactful ways to tell us
to rewrite a section (or chapter) when it was needed, and have us think it
was our idea. Mike built us up when we were down, and brought us back to
earth when we got uppity. You are a master, Mike, and seeing how many
books have received your editorial oversight contributes to an
understanding of why O’Reilly Media is the success that it is.</p><p>Thanks also to Sanders Kleinfeld, our copy editor, Laurel Ruma, our
production editor, and the rest of the unsung heroes in O’Reilly’s
production department. These are the folks that take our book and make it
an <span class="emphasis"><em>O’Reilly book</em></span>.</p><p>Everyone in the Asterisk community needs to thank Jim Dixon for
creating the first open source telephony hardware interfaces, starting the
revolution, and giving his creations to the community at large.</p><p>Thanks to Tim O’Reilly, for giving us a chance to write this
book.</p><p>To our most generous and merciless review team:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li><p>Rich Adamson, President of Network Partners Inc., for your
encyclopedic knowledge of the PSTN, and your tireless willingness to
share your experience. Your generosity, even in the face of daunting
challenge, is inspiring to us all.<sup>[<a id="id4101052" href="#ftn.id4101052">1</a>]</sup></p></li><li><p>Tilghman Lesher, for an incredibly thorough review of our book,
contributing some much needed time toward Appendixes <a href="asterisk-APP-B.html" title="Appendix B. Application Reference">B</a>
and <a href="asterisk-APP-F.html" title="Appendix F. Asterisk Manager Interface Actions">F</a>,
in addition to some amazing new Asterisk applications and
functions.</p></li><li><p>Andrew Kohlsmith, for helping to write the IMAP voicemail
storage section in <a href="asterisk-CHP-14.html" title="Chapter 14. Potpourri">Chapter 14, <i>Potpourri</i></a>.</p></li><li><p>David Troy, for providing a technical review, for AstManProxy,
and for porting Asterisk to the Roomba (first PBX to run on a vacuum
cleaner!).</p></li><li><p>Matthew Gast, fellow O’Reilly author, for reading our book from
cover to cover, and then giving us a comprehensive review, and also
for <span class="emphasis"><em>T1, The Definitive Guide</em></span>.</p></li><li><p>Dr. Edward Guy III, for your comprehensive and razor-sharp
evaluation of each and every chapter of the first edition, and for
your championing of Asterisk.</p></li><li><p>Kristian Kielhofner, President, KrisCompanies, and creator of
AstLinux, for the most excellent AstLinux distribution.</p></li><li><p>Russell Bryant, for your rapid and helpful responses to our
questions.</p></li><li><p>Joshua Colp, for helping us with performance tweaking, and still
more questions.</p></li><li><p>Kevin Fleming, for raising the bar, and for being a class act,
respected (dare we say loved) by all.</p></li><li><p>Brian Capouch, for talking about what is possible, and then
going out there and doing it.</p></li><li><p>Stephen Uhler, for championing the port of Zaptel to Solaris,
and for giving us some golden examples.</p></li><li><p>Jason Parker, for not being a newb.</p></li><li><p>Ekke Loo, for beating up the database chapter.</p></li><li><p>Ian Darwin, for tweaking some of the verbiage for us, and for
the cherry-red rotary dial phone (that works with Asterisk!).</p></li><li><p>Joel Sisko, CEO, iConverged, for your comprehensive telecom and
wiring <span class="keep-together">knowledge</span>.</p></li></ul></div><p>Finally, and most importantly, thanks go to Mark Spencer for Gaim
(recently renamed Pidgin, <a href="www.pidgin.im" target="_top">www.pidgin.im</a>), Asterisk, and DUNDi, and for
contributing his creations to the open source community.</p><div class="sect2" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a id="asterisk-PREFACE-SECT-8.3"></a>Jim Van Meggelen</h3></div></div></div><p>For me, it all started in the spring of 2004, sitting at my desk
in the technical support department of the telecom company I’d worked at
for nearly 15 years. With no challenges to properly exercise the skills
I had developed, I spent my time trying to figure out what the rest of
my career was going to look like. The telecommunications industry had
fallen from the pedestal of being a darling of investors to being a joke
known to even the most uninformed. I was supposed to feel fortunate to
be one of the few who still had work, but what thankless, purposeless
work it was. We knew why our industry had collapsed: the products we
sold could not hope to deliver the solutions our customers required—even
though the industry promised that they could. They lacked flexibility,
and were priced totally out of step with the functionality they were
delivering (or, more to the point, were failing to deliver). Nowhere in
the industry were there any signs this was going to change any time
soon.</p><p>I had been dreaming of an open source PBX for many long years, but
I really didn’t know how such a thing could ever come to be—I’d given up
on the idea several years before. I knew that to be successful, an open
source PBX would need to effectively bridge the worlds of legacy and
network-based telecom. I always failed to find anything that seemed
ready.</p><p>Then, one fine day in spring, I half-heartedly seeded a Google
search with the phrase “open source telephony,” and discovered a bright
new future for telecom: Asterisk, the open source Linux PBX.<sup>[<a id="id4101266" href="#ftn.id4101266">2</a>]</sup></p><p>There it was: the very thing I’d been dreaming of for so many
years. I had no idea how I was going to contribute, but I knew this:
open source telephony was going to cause a necessary and beneficial
revolution in the telecom industry, and one way or another, I was going
to be a part of it.</p><p>For me, more of a systems integrator than developer, I needed a
way to contribute to the community. There didn’t seem to be a shortage
of developers, but there sure was a shortage of documentation. This
sounded like something I could do. I knew how to write, I knew PBXes,
and I desperately needed to talk about this phenomenon that suddenly
made telecom fun again.</p><p>If I contribute only one thing to this book, I hope you will catch
some of my enthusiasm for the subject of open source telephony. This is
an incredible gift we have been given, but also an incredible
responsibility. What a wonderful challenge. What a cosmic opportunity.
What delicious fun!</p><p>First of all, I need to thank Leif and Jared for inviting me to
join the Asterisk Documentation Project. I have immensely enjoyed
working with both of you, and I am constantly amazed at how well our
personalities and skills complement each other. A truly balanced team,
are we. Also, thanks goes to Figment for all the typing.</p><p>To my wife Killi, and my children Kaara, Joonas, and Joosep (who
always remember to visit me when I disappear into my underground lair
for too long): you are a source of inspiration to me. Your love is the
fuel that feeds my fire, and I thank you.</p><p>Obviously, I need to thank my parents, Jack and Martiny, for
always believing in me, no matter how many rules I broke. In a few
years, I’ll have my own teenagers, and it’ll be your turn to
laugh!</p><p>To Mark Spencer: thanks for all of the things that everybody else
thanks you for, but also, personally, thanks for giving generously of
your time to the Asterisk community. The Toronto Asterisk Users’ Group
(<a href="http://www.taug.ca" target="_top">http://www.taug.ca</a>) made a
quantum leap forward as a result of your taking the time to speak to us,
and that event will forever form a part of our history. Oh yeah, and
thanks for the beers, too. :-)</p><p>Finally, thanks to the Asterisk Community. This book is our gift
to you. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we’ve enjoyed writing
it.</p></div><div class="sect2" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a id="asterisk-PREFACE-SECT-8.1"></a>Leif Madsen</h3></div></div></div><p>The road to this book is a long one—nearly three years in the
making. Back when I started using Asterisk, possibly much like you, I
didn’t know anything about Asterisk, very little about traditional
telephony, and even less about Voice over IP. I delved right into this
new and very exciting world and took in all I could. For two months
during a co-op term, for which I couldn’t immediately find work, I
absorbed as much as I could, asking questions, trying things and seeing
what the system could do. Unfortunately very little to no documentation
existed for Asterisk, aside from some dialplan examples I was able to
find by John Todd, and having questions answered by Brian K. West on
IRC. Of course, this method wasn’t going to scale.</p><p>Not being much of a coder, I wanted to contribute something back
to the community, and what do coders hate doing more than anything?
Documentation! So I started The Asterisk Documentation Assignment
(TADA), a basic outline with some information for the beginnings of a
book.</p><p>Shortly after releasing it on my web site, an intelligent fellow
by the name of Jared Smith introduced himself. He had similar
aspirations for creating a “dead-tree” format book for the community,
and we humbly started the Asterisk Documentation Project. Jared set up a
simple web site at <a href="http://www.asteriskdocs.org" target="_top">http://www.asteriskdocs.org</a>, a
CVS server, and the very first DocBook-formatted version of a book for
Asterisk. From there we started filling in information, and soon had
information submitted by a number of members of the community.</p><p>In June of 2004, an animated chap by the name of Jim Van Meggelen
started showing up on the mailing lists, and contributing lots of
information and documentation—this was definitely a guy we wanted on our
team! Jim had the vision and the drive to really get Jared’s and my
butts in gear and to work on something grander. Jim brought us years of
experience and a writing flair that we could have hardly
imagined.</p><p>With the core documentation team established, we embarked on a
plan for the creation of volumes of Asterisk knowledge, eventually to
lead to a complete library and a wealth of information. This book is
essentially the beginning of that dream.</p><p>Firstly and mostly, I have to thank my parents, Rick and Carol,
for always supporting my efforts, allowing me to realize my dreams, and
always putting my needs ahead of theirs. Without their vision,
understanding, and insight into the future, it would have been
impossible to have accomplished what I have. I love you both very
much!</p><p>I’d like to thank Felix Carapaica and Bill Farkas of the Sheridan
Institute of Technology for their dedication to the advancement of
knowledge. Their teaching has complemented my prior learning, and has
allowed me to expand my understanding of routing and telecommunications
exponentially.</p><p>There are far too many people to thank individually, but of
particular importance, the following people were, and are, the most
influential to my understanding of Asterisk: Joshua Colp, Tilghman
Lesher, Russell Bryant, Steve Murphy, Olle Johansson, Steven Sokol,
Brian K. West, John Todd, and William Suffill, for my very first VoIP
phone (which I use to this day!). And for those who I said I’d mention
in the book…thanks!</p><p>And of course, I must thank Jared Smith and Jim Van Meggelen for
having the vision and understanding of how important documentation
really is—all of this would have been impossible without you.</p></div><div class="sect2" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a id="asterisk-PREFACE-SECT-8.2"></a>Jared Smith</h3></div></div></div><p>I first started working with Asterisk in the spring of 2002. I had
recently started a new job with a market research company, and ended up
taking a long road trip to a remote call center with the CIO. On the
long drive home we talked about innovation in telephony, and he
mentioned a little open source telephony project he had heard of called
Asterisk. Over the next few months, I was able to talk the company into
buying a developer’s kit from Digium and started playing with Asterisk
on company time.</p><p>During the next few months, I became more and more involved with
the Asterisk community. I read the mailing lists. I scoured the
archives. I hung out in the IRC channel, just hoping to find nuggets of
Asterisk knowledge. As time went on, I was finally able to figure out
enough to get Asterisk up and running.</p><p>That’s when the real fun began.</p><p>With the help of the CIO and the approval of the CEO, we moved
forward with plans to move our entire telecom infrastructure to
Asterisk, including our corporate office and all of our remote call
centers. Along the way, we ran into a lot of uncharted territory, and I
began thinking about creating a good repository of Asterisk knowledge.
Over the course of the project, we were able to do some really
innovative things, such as invent IAX trunking!</p><p>When all was said and done, we ended up with around forty Asterisk
servers spread across many different geographical locations, all
communicating with each other to provide a cohesive enterprise-class
VoIP phone system. This system currently handles approximately 1 million
minutes of calls per month, serves several hundred employees, connects
to 27 voice T1s, and saves the company around $20,000 (USD) per month on
their telecom costs. In short, our Asterisk project was a resounding
success!</p><p>While in the middle of implementing this project, I met Leif in
one of the Asterisk IRC channels. We talked about ways we could help out
new Asterisk users and lower the barrier to entry, and we decided to
push ahead with plans to more fully document Asterisk. I really wanted
some good documentation in “dead-tree” format —basically a book that a
new user could pick up and learn the basics of Asterisk. About that same
time, the number of new users on the Asterisk mailing lists and in the
IRC channels grew tremendously, and we felt that writing an Asterisk
book would greatly improve the signal-to-noise ratio. The Asterisk
Documentation Project was born! The rest, they say, is history.</p><p>Since then, we’ve been writing Asterisk documentation. I never
thought it would be this arduous, yet rewarding. (I joked with Leif and
Jim that it might be easier and less controversial to write an in-depth
tome called <span class="emphasis"><em>Religion, Gun Control, and Sushi</em></span> than
cover everything that Asterisk has to offer in sufficient detail!) What
you see here is a direct result of a lot of late nights and long
weekends spent helping the Asterisk community—after all, it’s the least
we could do, considering what Asterisk has given to us. We hope it will
inspire other members of the Asterisk community to help document changes
and new features for the benefit of all involved.</p><p>Now to thank some people:</p><p>First of all, I’d like to thank my beautiful wife. She’s put up
with a lot of lonely nights while I’ve been slaving away at the
keyboard, and I’d like her to know how much I appreciate her and her
endless support. I’d also like to thank my kids for doing their best to
remind me of the important things in life. I love you!</p><p>To my parents: thanks for everything you’ve done to help me
stretch and grow and learn over the years. You’re the best parents a
person could ask for.</p><p>To Dave Carr and Michael Lundberg: thanks for letting me learn
Asterisk on company time. Working with both of you was truly a pleasure.
May God smile upon you and grant you success and joy in all you
do.</p><p>To Leif and Jim: thanks for putting up with my stupid jokes, my
insistence that we do things “the right way,” and my crazy schedule.
Thanks for pushing me along, and making me a better writer. I’ve really
enjoyed working with you two, and hope to collaborate with you on future
projects!</p><p>To Mark Spencer: thank you for your continued support and
dedication and friendship. You’ve been an invaluable resource to our
effort, and I truly believe that you’ve started a revolution in the
world of telephony. You’re always welcome in my home and at my dinner
table!</p><p>To the other great people at Digium: thank you for your help and
support. We’re especially thankful for your willingness to give us more
insight into the Asterisk code, and for donating hardware so that we can
better document the Asterisk Developer’s Kit.</p><p>To Steven Sokol, Steven Critchfield, Olle E. Johansson, and all
the others who have contributed to the Asterisk Documentation Project
and to this book: thank you! We couldn’t have done it without your help
and suggestions.</p></div><div class="footnotes"><br /><hr width="100" align="left" /><div class="footnote"><p><sup>[<a id="ftn.id4101052" href="#id4101052">1</a>] </sup>In December of 2006, Rich passed away, as his two-year
battle with cancer came to an unfortunate end. Rich was posting on
the Asterisk Users mailing list as late as November of that year.
He was giving to the community right up until the end, which is
why we dedicated this book to him.</p></div><div class="footnote"><p><sup>[<a id="ftn.id4101266" href="#id4101266">2</a>] </sup>To get a sense of how big the Asterisk phenomenon is, type
“PBX” into Google. As you look at the results, bear in mind that the
traditional PBX industry represents billions of dollars. The big
players are companies such as Avaya, Nortel, Siemens, Mitel, Cisco,
NEC, and many, many more. It is somewhat telling that they don’t
seem to be concerned about how they rank in a Google search. As a
cultural barometer, we’re pretty sure this matters.</p></div></div></div><div class="navfooter"><hr /><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="asterisk-PREFACE-SECT-7.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="asterisk-PREFACE.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="asterisk-CHP-1.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">How to Contact Us </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> Chapter 1. A Telephony Revolution</td></tr></table></div><div xmlns="" id="svn-footer"><hr /><p>You are reading <em>Asterisk: The Future of Telephony</em> (2nd Edition for Asterisk 1.4), by Jim van Meggelen, Jared Smith, and Leif Madsen.<br />
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