Asterisk - the Open-Source PBX [LWN.net]

November is shaping up to be a month of important Linux Telephony releases. Two weeks ago, we examined the GNU Bayonne 2 Telephony Application Server. This week, we look at Asterisk, an open-source PBX (Private Branch eXchange).

[Asterisk] The Asterisk description states:

Asterisk is a complete PBX in software. It runs on Linux, BSD and MacOSX and provides all of the features you would expect from a PBX and more. Asterisk does voice over IP in many protocols, and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware.

Version 1.2 of Asterisk was released at the IP.4.IT Conference this week: "Asterisk 1.2 is the first major revision to Asterisk since the release of Asterisk 1.0 in September 2004, and includes over 3,000 feature additions and improvements to the overall performance and efficiency of memory usage."

The original author of Asterisk is Mark Spencer, president of Digium, Inc. Digium is a supplier of PC telephony cards and telephony systems, and is sponsoring Asterisk development. The company also sells Asterisk Business Edition, a commercial version of the software. The software is being developed by a wide variety of programmers, using the standard open-source development model. Asterisk has been licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Asterisk's feature set and list of supported protocols is lengthy. A few highlights include:

Architected as a central PBX core with loadable module APIs.
Works as a traditional PBX on standard telephone lines.
Supports Voice over IP (VoIP).
No special hardware is required for VoIP use.
Supports switching between all of the supported interfaces.
Supports connection to other Asterisk PBX instances for scalability.
Supports both U.S. and European standard signaling protocols.
Runs on Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X.
Works with a wide variety of telephony hardware.
Has free and commercial customer support options.

Asterisk looks like a fun and active open-source project, those with needs for both simple and complex PBX systems would be advised to give it a try. The code is available for download here.

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Asterisk - the Open-Source PBX

Posted Nov 17, 2005 10:45 UTC (Thu) by pilif (subscriber, #3857) [Link]

Hello,

I love asterisk.

I really do.

When you are a first-time user, you will be scared off by many concepts, by the terminology and by the lack of documentation.

Asterisk is a telephone system. And as such it uses many terms I was not familiar with when I started. The documentation is quite bad aswell as it's really lacking a easy tutorial.

But with a lot of googling, some luck and www.voip-info.org, one manages. And once you do, you'll love asterisk just as I do.

Recently, I switched over our companys telephone infrastructure (we were connected to the proprietary PBX of our landlords) to a pure VoIP-Solution using asterisk. It works like a charm, is much cheaper (like 60% cheaper each month) and we even have many more possibilities to work with.

Webbased voicemail? Of course
Voice menu application? We don't need them, but of course
Integration into Outlook or any other PIM? Of course
Adding new extensions (phones) without a contractor? Of course
Keeping the phone number in case of an office move? Sure. Without any communication or contracts changing
Good speech quality? Yes - after I began working with some QoS on the router

The migration is now like 5 months in the past and I'm still excited.

And in case you are interested in a very good VoIP provider here in Switzerland that even supports the IAX protocol: We are using e-fon (http://www.e-fon.ch) and are very, very happy with them (I don't work for them, I'm not getting paied for writing this. I'm just a happy customer).

So, thanks, Asterisk team for your work and congratulations for another fine release!

Philip

Asterisk - the Open-Source PBX

Posted Nov 17, 2005 16:35 UTC (Thu) by cook (editor, #4) [Link]

An observant reader mentioned the OpenPBX.org fork of Asterisk: "OpenPBX.org is pleased to announce a fork from the Asterisk software PBX. The OpenPBX.org software PBX builds on the solid foundation created by the developers of Asterisk. The OpenPBX.org community plans to develop a robust offshoot from Asterisk building on its strengths, flexibility and user community. Some of the planned features include modular architecture, native support for Sangoma TDM cards, integrated faxing and eventually integrated messaging. OpenPBX.org will be community driven and released under the GPL. Initial release of OpenPBX.org is slated for November 29, 2005."

Asterisk - the Open-Source PBX

Posted Nov 18, 2005 14:20 UTC (Fri) by shane (subscriber, #3335) [Link]

We just spent a large amount of cash on a proprietary PABX, because our
Ops manager considered Asterisk to be "immature". :(

I guess I can't blame him too much, since we spent a lot more cash on a
proprietary issue tracking system (HEAT from FrontRange) because I decided
none of the open source solutions were good enough.

Asterisk - the Open-Source PBX

Posted Nov 25, 2005 20:52 UTC (Fri) by theraphim (subscriber, #25955) [Link]

Asterisk is really immature but many commercial solutions isn't just flexible enough. Or just won't work.

I have negative experience dealing with commercial wap gateway by LogicaCMG (superseded by kannel - http://kannel.org) and Alcatel's PBX which cannot be easily replaced because of it being complete solution (with alcatel' phones).

Telecom industry progressing very slowly and traditionally keeping very high prices on everything. Even immature asterisk, or more promising project like yate can beat almost any commercial pbx in almost any aspect.