[Tfug] Asterisk VOIP Class

[George Cohn]

Jon wrote:
>  
> I would highly recommend *not* using the O'Reilly book for this class or 
> anyone looking for basic knowledge of Asterisk. I own this book (someone 
> bought it as a gift for me) and though is does cover details of Asterisk 
> configuration and use I find it frustrating to read. It's basic premise 
> is, "It's a software PBX and it can do stuff but we won't provide you 
> details on how to do it."
> 

Actually, it's quite good on the principles and I found that after 
reading it three or four times, it make logical sense.

It pretty much follows what you need to know to make Asterisk work, 
although it's helpful if someone is there to clarify some details. 
Hopefully that's what the class will do.

Another Asterisk book that's hard to read but useful is "Building 
Telephone Systems with Asterisk" by David Gomillion and Barrie Dempster.

It has quite a few typos in it but it gives some real world examples 
that are quite useful.  I found it helpful when I was trying to mate an 
Asterisk server with a 5,000 line Nortel Opt 81C PBX using PRI-ISDN.

It covered a lot of PRI stuff that wasn't covered elsewhere, but then 
again, not everyone has a $400 PRI card to stick in their server.

The Digium book is also useful but about as much fun to read as the 
typical Man page.

Trust me, with the O'Reilly book, a good instructor, and some real world 
examples, you will get a lot out of it.

I used the O'Reilly book to build the AGI weather function.  This is an 
application where it downloads the weather from NOAA over the Internet, 
and using Perl, creates an application that will read you the time, 
date, temperature, barometric pressure, and wind speed and direction 
just by dialing an extension.  How kewl and Geeky is that?  ;-)

I'm open to other Asterisk books as well.  There is nothing like having 
too much good information.

George Cohn
Tucson AZ