Datasets:
Squidnutz
/
extractedtest

Dataset card Data Studio Files
xet
Community
1
text
stringlengths
0
152
Since this concept was so revolutionary, and was certain to make a lot of waves in the
industry, I decided on the Mexican revolutionary motif, and named the technology
and organization after the famous Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. I decided
to call the card the “tormenta” which, in Spanish, means “storm,” but contextually is
usually used to imply a big storm, like a hurricane or such.
2 The term DSP also means digital signal processor, which is a device (usually a chip) that is capable of inter‐
preting and modifying signals of various sorts. In a voice network, DSPs are primarily responsible for encod‐
ing, decoding, and transcoding audio information. This can require a lot of computational effort.
Asterisk and VoIP: Bridging the Gap Between Traditional and Network Telephony
|
3
Perhaps we should be calling ourselves Asteristas. Regardless, we owe Jim Dixon a
debt of thanks, partly for thinking this up and partly for seeing it through, but mostly
for giving the results of his efforts to the open source community. As a result of Jim’s
contribution, Asterisk’s PSTN engine came to be. And thanks to this marrying of
VoIP and PSTN, the open source telecom revolution was born!
Over the years, the Zapata Telephony interface in Asterisk has been modified and
improved. The Digium Asterisk Hardware Device Interface (DAHDI) telephony
interface in use today is the offspring of Jim Dixon’s contribution.
Massive Change Requires Flexible Technology
Every PBX in existence suffers from shortcomings. No matter how fully featured it is,
something will always be left out, because even the most feature-rich PBX will always
fail to anticipate the creativity of the customer. A small group of users will desire an
odd little feature that the design team either did not think of or could not justify the
cost of building, and, since the system is closed, the users will not be able to build it
themselves.
If the internet had been thusly hampered by regulation and commercial interests, it is
doubtful that it would have gained the wide acceptance it currently enjoys. The open‐
ness of the internet meant that anyone could afford to get involved. So, everyone did.
The tens of thousands of minds that collaborated on the creation of the internet
delivered something that no corporation alone ever could have.3
As with many other open source projects (such as Linux and so much of the critical
software running the internet), the development of Asterisk was fueled by the dreams
of folks who knew that there had to be something more than what traditional indus‐
tries were producing. These people knew that if one could take the best parts of vari‐
ous PBXs and separate them into interconnecting components—akin to a boxful of
LEGO bricks—one could begin to conceive of things that would not survive a tradi‐
tional corporate risk-analysis process.
Asterisk itself has become the basis of many massively productized creations. And
yet, under the hood, the soul of that open source project still remains.
Asterisk: The Hacker’s PBX
Asterisk is the ultimate hacker’s PBX. The term hacker has, of course, been twisted by
the mass media into meaning “malicious cracker” to the uneducated. This is unfortu‐
3 We realize that the technology of the internet formed out of government and academic institutions, but what
we’re talking about here is not the technology of the internet so much as the cultural phenomenon of it, which
exploded in the early ’90s.
4
|
Chapter 1: A Telephony Revolution
nate, because the term actually existed long before the media corrupted its meaning.
Hackers built the networking engine that is the internet. Hackers built the Apple
Macintosh and the Unix operating system. Hackers are also building your next tele‐
com system. Yes, some of these folks are malicious, but the minds that steer the devel‐
opment of Asterisk are well aware of this, and you’ll find that Asterisk allows you to
build a system that’s far more capable of rapidly responding to security threats. Open
source software doesn’t hide its faults behind corporate spin departments. The dirt
gets dragged out into the open where it can be dealt with. Rather than being constric‐
ted by the dubious and often poor security of closed systems, the Asterisk community
quickly responds to changing trends in security, and you’ll be able to fine-tune your
telephone system in response to both corporate policy and industry best practices.
Like other open source systems, Asterisk will be able to evolve into a far more secure
platform than any proprietary system, not in spite of its hacker roots, but rather
because of them.
Asterisk: The Professional’s PBX
Asterisk is an enabling technology, and as with Linux, it will become increasingly rare
to find an enterprise that is not running some version of Asterisk, in some capacity,
somewhere in the network, solving a problem as only Asterisk can. You’re already
using Asterisk, even if you don’t know it.
The Asterisk Community
There’s no sense beating around the bush: the Asterisk community is a shadow of its
former self. A dozen years ago, Asterisk was just about the coolest thing in open
source. Today, most enthusiasts have moved on. What remains, however, is an experi‐
enced and battle-tested community of professionals, who have been there and done
that.
Do not expect a team of people willing to work for free on your projects. The price of
entry to this community is a personal commitment to skills development. If you
bring a sense of entitlement to this community, you will not enjoy the responses. If,
however, you bring curiosity and enthusiasm and a willingness to dive in, get your