Chapter 17. Asterisk Reference

Earlier in the book, we covered compiling and installing Asterisk, installing a legacy interface card and drivers, and setting up some simple PBX applications. Later on, we used Asterisk configurations to illustrate some common enterprise telephony concepts. This chapter is geared toward the person who's comfortable with the earlier material in the book and wants a deeper understanding of Asterisk.

Asterisk is a deep subject that touches disciplines of networking, code-writing , protocols, and standards. This chapter won't make you an Asterisk expert, but it should help you go a step or two beyond the essentials we've already covered. We'll cover channel configurationwith an emphasis on Zaptel and SIP channels, dial-plan syntax elements like variables and string processing, and the commands you can use in building an Asterisk dial-plan.