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152
Conclusion 340
20. WebRTC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
The Browser as a Telephone 343
Preliminary Knowledge 344
Configuring Asterisk for WebRTC 345
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Cyber Mega Phone 347
More About WebRTC 349
Conclusion 350
21. System Monitoring and Logging. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
logger.conf 351
Reviewing Asterisk Logs 353
Logging to the Linux syslog Daemon 354
Verifying Logging 355
Log Rotation 355
Call Detail Records 356
CDR Contents 356
Dialplan Applications 357
cdr.conf 358
Backends 359
Example Call Detail Records 364
Caveats 364
Channel Event Logging 365
Conclusion 365
22. Security. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
Scanning for Valid Accounts 367
Authentication Weaknesses 368
Fail2ban 368
Installation 369
Configuration 369
Encrypted Media 371
Dialplan Vulnerabilities 371
Securing Asterisk Network APIs 373
Other Risk Mitigation 373
Resources 375
Conclusion—A Better Idiot 375
23. Asterisk: A Future for Telephony. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
The Telephone Is Dead (Except When It’s Not) 378
Communications Overload 378
The Problems with Open Source Development 379
The Future of Asterisk 380
WebRTC 380
The Future of Telephony 380
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
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xi
Foreword
When contemplating the foreword for every edition of this book, we always had more
people we’d like contributions from than pages we could spare. In this fifth edition,
we’ve again asked a select group of people from the Asterisk community to write a
few words about Asterisk from their perspective.
Joshua Colp (Senior Software Developer,
Sangoma/Digium)
Over 15 years ago, I downloaded Asterisk onto my laptop and placed my first VoIP
call using IAX2 to the Digium PBX. I held my breath in anticipation, waiting to hear a
voice, until finally the sound of Allison came out of my laptop. At that point I knew
there was something special to Asterisk. It lit this spark of interest and imagination in
me: my laptop had actually placed a call! The realization that with only a little effort I
could take calls and do with them what I wanted was addictive and exciting—a senti‐
ment shared by many to this day.
Asterisk today is vastly different from how it was during that time. In the past, it was
primarily focused on being a PBX. It had all of the features and continued to gain new
ones to propel it further into that area. Over time, however, the project has evolved to
one where Asterisk is a toolkit that can be used alone or in combination with other
projects to build things. It’s there to spark the question of “Can I do this?” in your
mind and allow you to see it through.
This simple question is what drives many of the decisions made about Asterisk and
its direction. “Is this right for the users?”, “Is this what people truly need?,” “Does this
break things?,” and “Can they build what they want with this?” Together, these ques‐
tions help ensure that people can realize their ideas. This is what excites me about
Asterisk today—seeing people use the tools to create something new without
hindrance.
xiii
I think that, going forward, this will continue for Asterisk. It will continue to add new
tools and functionality to provide greater flexibility and options for those building
things, while respecting its legacy and how users already use it. It will continue to be
part of bigger and better solutions, some of which may not even come to mind now.
We’ve only taken a few steps forward and have many to go.