Internet telephony with VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) hasn't yet reached critical mass, but it's poised to. VoIP promises huge cost savings, but its ability to move data, images, and voice traffic over the same connection will undoubtedly cement its place in the future of telecommunications.  That's why so many IT administrators and developers are exploring VoIP-based private telephone switching systems within the enterprise. The efficiency that network users can reach with it is almost mind-boggling. And cheap, if the system is built with open source software PBX like Asterisk.

There are commercial VoIP options out there, but many are expensive systems that run old, complicated code on obsolete hardware. Asterisk runs on Linux and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment. Asterisk embraces the concept of standards-compliance, but also gives users the freedom to choose how to implement their systems.

With Asterisk, users are no longer dependent on expensive and inflexible systems that are tuned to the vendor's needs, rather than the end user's. Asterisk's flexibility comes at a price, however: it's not a simple system to learn, and the documentation has hitherto been lacking. Linux pros need to learn a bit about telephony; telecom pros need to learn a bit about Linux.

With "Asterisk: The Future of Telephony (O'Reilly)," the future is no longer unmapped. The book, written by Jim Van Meggelen, Jared Smith (blog), Leif Madsen, will help readers to truly understand the core concepts of Asterisk. This new book offers a complete roadmap for installing, configuring, and integrating Asterisk with existing phone systems. It walks readers through a basic dial plan step by step, and gives them enough working knowledge to set up a simple but complete system. The book outlines all the options, and shows how to set up voicemail services, call conferencing, interactive voice response, call waiting, caller ID, and more. Readers will also learn how Asterisk merges voice and data traffic seamlessly across disparate networks. And they won't need additional hardware: for interconnection with digital and analog telephone equipment, Asterisk supports a number of hardware devices.

The future of telephony is bright--and with "Asterisk: The Future of Telephony," you can be ready for it.