Asterisk Open Source PBX 1.0 Release

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."

Comments

Great for new businesses

[erick99]

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

IP phone recommendations?

[otis wildflower]

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?

Re:Asterisk...

[bastion_xx]

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!

We are running it

[codepunk]

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.

Music on hold (for any PBX)

[SnakeStu]

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.

Long time user

[Anonymous Coward]

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-

This is pretty cool stuff

[multiplexo]

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.