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nience (and necessity) of allowing the system to separate the concept of a user and
extension from the physical phone.
The best way to name a physical desk phone (or any physical SIP endpoint) is using
the MAC address of the device, which is unique to the phone, follows it where it goes,
and doesn’t require configuration changes to the phone if the user changes. Some cor‐
porations have stickers they place on their equipment with a bar code and other
information that allows them to keep stock of provisioned equipment; these unique
codes would also be an acceptable choice to use for phone names, as they don’t pro‐
vide any logical relation to a particular person, but do provide specific information
about the devices themselves.
Softphones on laptops can also use a MAC address or serial number, but make sure
the set name includes a reference to the fact that it’s a softphone. [JIM_VANM_SOFT] is
a decent name, but [JIMS_PHONE] is not. If the softphone is running on a desk com‐
puter (i.e., it’s not going to move around with a user), then name it using the conven‐
tion you use for your computers ([DESK-5F23-SOFT] or [CUST_SRVC_001_SOFT] are
potentially good names).
Telephone Naming Concepts
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The choice is yours as to how you want to name your phones. Our goal is simply to
help you understand why the best practice is to abstract any concept of the telephone
being owned by a person. A phone is just a way to get audio to and from a human,
and signal back and forth, so it’s far better to make it possible to mix and match them
as users move around, and people come and go.
Throughout this book, you’ll see us using phone names that look like MAC addresses
(such as [0000F3000001] and [0000F3000002]), or generic desk names ([DESK-001-
SOFT], [DESK-002-SOFT]) to differentiate between devices. You will generally want to
use phone names that match the hardware you are using (or some other string that is
unique to the device you are registering).
As a final consideration, we should make it clear that what we are suggesting regard‐
ing device names is not a technical requirement. You are free to name your devices
anything you want, as long as they meet the requirements of Asterisk’s naming con‐
ventions for devices (stay with alphanumeric characters with no spaces and you’ll be
fine).
You’ll see plenty of Asterisk systems that tie the device name to the extension of the
user, but we’re not fans of this method.
Hardphones, Softphones, and ATAs
There are three types of endpoints you would typically provide your users to serve as
a telephone set. They are popularly referred to as hardphones (or desk phones), soft‐
phones, and Analog Terminal Adaptors (ATAs).
A hardphone is a physical device—an office telephone. It has a handset, numbered
buttons, a screen of some sort, and so on. It connects directly to the network and is
probably what people are referring to when they talk about a VoIP telephone (or a
SIP telephone). It’s normally going to sit on your desk, but it could be mounted on a
wall, in an elevator, at a side-table, or in a box by the side of the road.
A softphone is a software application that runs on a laptop, desktop, smartphone, or
other computing device. The audio must pass through the device’s sound system, so
you normally need a headset that will work well with telephony applications. Soft‐
phone applications have become popular with smartphones because they allow you to
connect to telephone networks other than just the cellular network (for example, you
can register as an extension on your corporate PBX). The interface of the softphone is
often styled to look like a physical telephone, but this is not necessary. WebRTC will
allow all sorts of additional capabilities in this area, as it essentially allows a softphone
to simply be part of a session within a browser. To the PBX, the softphone looks and
behaves exactly the same as a hardphone.
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Chapter 5: User Device Configuration
An ATA is designed to allow traditional analog telephones (and other analog devices,
such as fax machines, cordless phones, paging amplifiers, and such) to connect to a
SIP network,1 and will typically be a sandwich-sized box that contains an RJ-11 con‐
nector for the phone (commonly referred to as an FXS port), an RJ-45 connector for
the network, and a power connector. Some ATAs may support more than one phone.
Other ATAs may have advanced features in them such as a firewall or an FXO port
(an analog port that can connect to a PSTN circuit). From the perspective of the PBX,
the ATA looks exactly like a SIP telephone.
Hardphones have the advantage that the handsets have good acoustic properties for
voice communications. Any decent-quality telephone is engineered to pick up the
frequencies of the human voice, filter out unwanted background noise, and normalize
the resulting waveform. People have been using telephones for as long as the tele‐
phone network has existed, and we tend to like what is familiar, so having a device
that communicates with Asterisk using a familiar interface will be attractive to many
users. Also, a hardphone does not require your computer to be running all the time.
Disadvantages to hardphones include the fact that they are not easily portable, and
they are expensive relative to the many quality softphones on the market today that
are available for free. Also, the extra clutter on your desk may not be desirable if you
have limited work space. If you move around a lot and are not generally at the same
location, a hardphone is not likely to suit your needs (although, one at each location
you regularly visit might be a valid solution).
Softphones solve the portability issue by being installed on a device that is likely
already moving with you, such as your laptop or smartphone. Also, their minimal