Asterisk & VoIP

and its role in your enterprise

Asterisk?
Open-source software released under the GPL
Sponsored by Digium, the main hardware provider for
POTS interface cards
Digium named in the top 10 open source companies to
watch by networkworld.com
Ports for most *nix systems including Solaris
Ports also available for OSX and Windows
Open standards along with some proprietary protocol
support (like Ciscos Skinny and MGCP)
Modular plugin type system

Protocols Supported
SIP Session Initiation Protocol
H.323 Common in video conferencing
Skinny Cisco IP Phones default protocol
MGCP Media Gateway Control Protocol
IAX - Inter-Asterisk Exchange Protocol

Codecs Supported
G.711 Best voice quality ~100Kbps
G.729 Good voice quality ~40Kbps
GSM Acceptable voice quality ~10Kbps
G.722, G.723.1, G.726, iLBC, Linear, LCP-10, Speex

PSTN Interface Support

Analog

FXO
FXS
E&M (w/ or w/o Wink), Loop start, Ground start, Kewl start

T1

E&M (w/ or w/o Wink)

Robbed bit

ISDN (PRI & BRI)

4ESS
Lucent
National
Some international support

Biggest Features
Unified Voicemail

Voicemail to email (.wav files)

Video Conferencing messages to email (.mpg/.avi files)

Advanced Meetme conferencing - conference bridging

Web management interface

Support for conference numbers and passwords
Presenter and Presentee support (presenter can mute all participants, etc)

Contact Center Queuing

Interactive Voice Response
Automated Attendant
Video Conferencing (SIP and H.323)
Jabber / Google Talk integration
Find me / Follow me
Out of state DIDs (all VoIP systems)
Call monitoring and recording

Normal PBX Features

Name it, its there

Enterprise Features
Unified dialplan across many servers

SQL Compliant databases (through ODBC)

Native support for Mysql
LDAP integration

DNS SRV records

Make calling each other easy (adam@bblisa.org)

Scalability
Load balancing
Phone provisioning

DUNDI Distributed Universal Number Discovery

Works with SIP proxys to accept large amounts of phone
registrations
AGI Extend your system using C, C++, Perl, PHP,
Custom CDR Used for calling card integration, billing,

Asterisk Compatible Endpoints

Cisco IP Phones (except IP 7920)
Polycom IP Phones
Snom IP Phones
Avaya IP Phones
Linksys IP Phones
Many others

Asterisk Compatible Gateways

Cisco VoIP Gateways (anything MGCP, SIP, H.323)
Cisco Callmanager (through SIP and H.323)
Patton Smartnode

Asterisk PSTN Interfaces

Digium
Analog (up to 24 channels on a single PCI card, FXO
and FXS) with hardware echo cancellation
T1 / PRI / BRI 1-4 on a single PCI card with
hardware echo cancellation
Sangoma

Better analog support, but uses more PCI slots (or spaces)
T1 / PRI / BRI 1-8 on a single PCI card with hardware echo
cancellation
Clear channel DS3

Any SIP / H.323 compliant endpoint

Cisco x8xx series ISR routers

Possible Asterisk Configurations

Full PBX
Add small remote sites onto traditional PBX
Trunk Routing Gateway
Toll Bypass Only
Service Component

Full PBX

Traditional PBX with Remote

Offices
Use of Digium appliance
Cisco x8xx routers

Trunk Routing Gateway

Connect a traditional PBX to services like
Sprint SIP Trunking

Toll Bypass Only

Connect Traditional PBXs together over
WAN Links

Service Component
Meetme Conferencing Bridge
Voicemail / Unified Messaging
Add Softphones to non-VoIP PBX

Drawbacks
No PCI-Express Support (just came out for digital interfaces, still
none for analog interfaces)
Hardware sizing information hard to find
Kernel updates break Digium drivers
PCI Bus sharing can cause significant problems with voice quality
NAT Traversal (common across any SIP system)
Linux system QoS not very mature yet
No VoIP security yet, although planned
Not for *nix beginners

Support
Certifications dCAP (Digium Certified Asterisk
Professional)
Voip-info.org (VoIP WIKI site)
Commercial support (through Digium)
Partners (certified or un-certified)
Mailing Lists (very active)
User Groups (although none in Boston)
Astricon (Asterisk conference)
Books

Where to start?
www.asterisk.org (Asterisk main page)
www.asterisknow.org (Asterisk and CentOS with full installer)
www.voip-info.org (huge resource for VoIP related projects and configuration
info)
www.digium.com (hardware manufacturer and project sponsor)
Trixbox (formerly Asterisk @ HOME)
User Groups Find one close or we can try to start one
Books OReilly, Asterisk for Dummies, Asterisk configuration guide,