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Asterisk Open Source PBX 1.0 Release

Posted by michael on from the linux-phone-home dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Today at Astricon (the first Asterisk conference), Mark Spencer announced the release of version 1.0.0 of Asterisk. For those of you that don't know: Asterisk is a complete PBX in software. It runs on Linux and provides all of the features you would expect from a PBX and more. Asterisk does voice over IP in three protocols, and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware. Asterisk users can be up and running, making phone calls in under an hour using the various guides found at the VoIP Wiki. Connectivity to the PSTN is provided by companies like VoicePulse, Nufone, Gafachi and VoipJet."

14 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Great for new businesses by erick99 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The features section of the website is certainly impressive. If I were starting a new business or, for some reason, had to get out of a current PBX contract, I would give this a try. Having worked in large companies with large PBX systems, the money saved would not be insignicant. I didn't see in the article or the features list if there was any sort of limit to the amount of phones that this would support. For example will it work with 400 employees? 4000? 40,000?

    -erick

    --
    http://www.busyweather.com/
  2. IP phone recommendations? by otis+wildflower · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Any recommendations for IP (ethernet) phones to use with Asterisk? We've got Lucent/Avaya fones with power over ethernet (convenient) but the PBX backend is a proprietary piece of shite.

    Also, is LDAP supported in Asterisk?

    1. Re:IP phone recommendations? by otis+wildflower · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Asterisk doesn't have native LDAP support, but it's not very hard to write a script that produces a set of Asterisk config files out of LDAP data. With a bit more work, you could script Asterisk to do LDAP lookups, but it'll take too much work to be worth it for small (100 users) sites.

      With LDAP you can get interesting stuff like injecting voicemails to IMAP mailboxes, having group extensions (like helpdesk) inject voicemail to group mailboxes, etc..

      I'm just thinking how neat it would be to have a voicemail password be dtmf(lc($passplain)) so you'd have single signon ;)

  3. But does it talk to skype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Skype (http://skype.com) seems to be taking off. Can Asterisk coexist with Skype?

  4. Re:Asterisk... by bastion_xx · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Agreed. There was a lot of "discussion" when the 1.0-stable and 1.0RC1 branches were put in place... then abandoned in favor of HEAD.

    Hopefully the discipline is in place to keep bug fixes on the 1.0 branch while new features can be put into HEAD or another branch completely.

    Happy * user in 3 continents, 1 Carribean island, and at home too!

  5. We are running it by codepunk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    We have been running it for quite some time to handle our order status system. We programmed a python interface to our oracle database, greatest thing since sliced bread. Very flexible system with alot of possibilities.

    --


    Got Code?
  6. Re:It's GPLed, anyways by jjhall · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Exactly. I have a free link in my sig too. That doesn't make any difference to the point of my post, or the OP's point.

    I'm actually using Asterisk for my phone system at home, and it is amazing what you can do with it. I'm running a CVS version from about 2 months ago, and had been updating it monthly up until my last update. Even running a development "non-stable" version I hardly have any issues at all. And each time I did, the people in the IRC channel have been very helpful, and most every time a CVS update has resolved my troubles.

    With all the open-source talk these days, and all of the great sounding projects that end up being vaporware, a 1.0 release of such a large-scale project is truely news. It may sound like a PR advertisement, but when that is a very accurate description of the product, then what is the problem? As the saying goes, if the shoe fits....

  7. Music on hold (for any PBX) by SnakeStu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not that most will care, but I first heard about Asterisk via the HTTP_REFERER data in the Web server logs for the OMR, which was apparently referenced as a place to get no-cost, pre-licensed (open licensed) on-hold music.

    Now that the OMR has been shut down, the links to those songs are available in an XML dump of the music database that can be found on freality.org or my own site.

    --
    No Laughing Allowed!
  8. Long time user by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have been using Asterisk for well over a year, it has replaced the cisco call manager for my applications.

    It has provided robust functionality, and many features that would be cost prohibitive to implement from other vendors.

    If your looking to get into voice over IP on a scale larger than a single Vonage accout, or even want to have full pbx facilities for home..this is the way to go.

    Just my 2 cents
    -AC-

  9. not too far out: email by phone by timothy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Someone (not me! not me! the monkeys!) should connect asterics with festival, an audio compression program, and a mail agent.

    Would be good to call one's landline (connected to an asterics box) and be given options like "press 7 to hear email."

    Would be annoying to hear everything, perhaps (and too slow, too), but an option like "play the first 10 words, then prompt for more, or to skip to the next message" would make it bearable.

    timothy

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  10. MythPhone by timothy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Here's the link (from the MythTV site) for MythPhone. It's for making SIP calls, not intended for integration with a POTS service as far as I can see, but conceptually it could be a good front end for calls made over asterics (or any landline, if tied into one). That would lose the fancy picture stuff, but would turn a MythTV computer into a big, fancy phone. Beldar Conhead plastic face mold not included.

    "Unfortunately big complex systems require some idea of what you are doing. Services are available to those who don't understand telephony. But usually they want to get paid for their time. You sound like you expected something like this to be just configure, make, make install and it's up and running."

    Actually, I'd like it to be even simpler than "configure,make, make install," but I don't *expect* it -- at least, not magically. The reason I suggest a turnkey appliance is because such a thing can encapsulate many hours of the time you mention in a form that's easily reproducable at low marginal cost, and the cost of that time can be amortized over many units' worth of hardware -- the same way interface-design and programming time that go into things like wireless appliance of various kinds can.

    Re: complexity / money for time, the same could be said (and has been) about all kinds of complex systems which have in the end been simplified with sufficient skill to make them useful *without* a big learning curve. I want my cake and to eat it too, Yes, but so does everyone who drives a car that doesn't need to be manually cranked, rides a ski-lift, or uses central heating instead of stoking a coal furnace (etc). There will always be a market (in money and attention span) for the hardcore, bare-metal approach to just about anything, but that doesn't mean simplifications and commoditization in general are bad.

    Somewhat related example: video compression. Using dvd::rip, I have squashed a few DVDs into hard-drive friendly smaller sizes, so I can carry some favorite films on my laptop. dvd::rip is itself a front-end meant to be simpler and friendlier than using the underlying programs it connects, but it's still not all that user friendly, at least to klutzes like me :) Got it working, eventually, Yes, but QuickRip (sadly discontinued) does a good-enough job with a shallower learning curve. Tradeoffs are everywhere, and there's one.

    Cheers,

    timothy

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  11. This is pretty cool stuff by multiplexo · · Score: 3, Interesting
    PBXs are expensive chunks of hardware, of course they're also pretty damned reliable, but for someone who isn't running a hospital switchboard or 911 call center this is a neat piece of software. I wonder if you could use this to set up some kind of free VoIP P2P phone network. You would have users who had an extra landline installed with long distance and 900 service blocked. They would then advertise this service on the net through the P2P network. If you wanted to call someone in the 425 area code who didn't have an IP phone you'd get on your IP connection, find someone with a system connected to a phone line in 425 and connect to their system. The phone number is dialed and the call is connected. It would cost 20 bucks or so for that extra landline but given that a lot of people are willing to make small sacrifices for collective projects, such as sharing their 802.11 access points, this might work. Or I might be on crack.

    --
    cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
  12. Tad of Trivia by XaXXon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Mark Spencer (the guy who does asterisk), is also the original author of Gaim, and Cheops (nifty network tool).

    Anyways, that's it.. I knew him when we were both freshmen in college at Auburn.. He had ethernet in his room and I didn't, so my computer lived in his room most of that year..

    Haven't talked to him in years.. so if you're reading this Mark -- HEY!!

    --Zac

  13. Reliability? by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm about to move into a new office, fed by both DSL and cablemodem (for 99.9999% uptime = 30s:y downtime). Has your use of Asterisk and its PSTN connection been reliable enough that your company can depend on it? What should keep me waiting for the next generation?

    --

    --
    make install -not war