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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>Chapter 1. A Telephony Revolution</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="index.html" title="Asterisk™: The Future of Telephony" /><link rel="prev" href="asterisk-PREFACE-SECT-8.html" title="Acknowledgments" /><link rel="next" href="asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-1.html" title="VoIP: Bridging the Gap Between Traditional and Network Telephony" /></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Chapter 1. A Telephony Revolution</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="asterisk-PREFACE-SECT-8.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center"> </th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-1.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr /></div><div class="chapter" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a id="asterisk-CHP-1"></a>Chapter 1. A Telephony Revolution</h2></div></div></div><div class="toc"><p><b>Table of Contents</b></p><dl><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-1.html">VoIP: Bridging the Gap Between Traditional and Network
Telephony</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-1.html#asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-1.1">The Zapata Telephony Project</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-2.html">Massive Change Requires Flexible Technology</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-3.html">Asterisk: The Hacker’s PBX</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-4.html">Asterisk: The Professional’s PBX</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-5.html">The Asterisk Community</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-5.html#asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-5.1">The Asterisk Mailing Lists</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-5.html#asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-5.2">The Asterisk Wiki</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-5.html#asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-5.3">The IRC Channels</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-5.html#asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-5.4">Asterisk User Groups</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-5.html#asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-5.5">The Asterisk Documentation Project</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-6.html">The Business Case</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-7.html">This Book</a></span></dt></dl></div><div class="epigraph"><p>It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate,
tireless minority keen to set brush fires <span class="keep-together">in people’s minds.</span></p><div class="attribution"><span>--<span class="attribution">Samuel Adams</span></span></div></div><p>An incredible revolution is under way. It has been a long time in
coming, but now that it has started, there will be no stopping it. It is
taking place in an area of technology that has lapsed embarrassingly far
behind every other industry that calls itself high-tech. The industry is
telecommunications, and the revolution is being fueled by an open source
Private Branch eXchange (PBX) <a id="I_indexterm1_tt3" class="indexterm"></a><a id="I_indexterm1_tt4" class="indexterm"></a>called <span class="emphasis"><em>Asterisk™</em></span>.</p><p>Telecommunications<a id="I_indexterm1_tt5" class="indexterm"></a> is arguably the last major electronics industry that has
remained untouched by the open source revolution.<sup>[<a id="id4101652" href="#ftn.id4101652">3</a>]</sup> Major telecommunications manufacturers still build
ridiculously expensive, incompatible systems, running complicated, ancient
code on impressively engineered yet obsolete hardware.</p><p>As an example, Nortel’s <a id="I_indexterm1_tt6" class="indexterm"></a>Business Communications Manager kludges together a 15 year-old
Key Telephone Switch and a 1.2 GHz Celeron PC.<sup>[<a id="id4101673" href="#ftn.id4101673">4</a>]</sup> All this can be yours for between $5,000 and $15,000, not
including telephones. If you want it to actually do anything interesting,
you’ll have to pay extra licensing fees for closed, limited-<span class="keep-together">functionality</span>, shrink-wrapped applications.
Customization? Forget it—it’s not in the plan. Future technology and
standards compliance? Give them a year or two—they’re working on it.</p><p>All of the major telecommunications manufacturers offer similar-minded
products. They don’t want you to have flexibility or choice; they want you
to be locked in to their product cycles.</p><p>Asterisk changes all of that. With Asterisk, no one is telling you how
your phone system should work, or what technology you are limited to. If you
want it, you can have it. Asterisk lovingly embraces the concept of
standards compliance, while also enjoying the freedom to develop its own
innovations. What you choose to implement is up to you—Asterisk imposes no
limits.</p><p>Naturally, this incredible flexibility comes with a price: Asterisk is
not a simple system to configure. This is not because it’s illogical,
confusing, or cryptic; to the contrary, it is very sensible and practical.
People’s eyes light up when they first see an Asterisk dialplan and begin to
contemplate the possibilities. But when there are literally thousands of
ways to achieve a result, the process naturally requires extra effort.
Perhaps it can be compared to building a house: the components are
relatively easy to understand, but a person contemplating such a task must
either a) enlist competent help or b) develop the required skills through
instruction, practice, and a good book on the <span class="keep-together">subject.</span></p><div class="footnotes"><br /><hr width="100" align="left" /><div class="footnote"><p><sup>[<a id="ftn.id4101652" href="#id4101652">3</a>] </sup>Until now.</p></div><div class="footnote"><p><sup>[<a id="ftn.id4101673" href="#id4101673">4</a>] </sup>To its credit, Nortel finally got rid of Windows NT 4.0 and
installed Linux. Technically a good idea, but rather odd, given that
Nortel and Microsoft recently announced a partnership to develop
enterprise telecom applications together.</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-8.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"> </td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="asterisk-CHP-1-SECT-1.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Acknowledgments </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> VoIP: Bridging the Gap Between Traditional and Network
Telephony</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 />
This work is licensed under the <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works License v3.0</a>.<br />
To submit comments, corrections, or other contributions to the text, please visit <a href="http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510480/">http://www.oreilly.com/</a>.</p></div></body></html>
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