Page 25 - Asterisk™: The Future of Telephony

In June of 2004, an animated chap by the name of Jim Van Meggelen started showing
up on the mailing lists, and contributing lots of information and documentation—this
was definitely a guy we wanted on our team! Jim had the vision and the drive to really
get Jared’s and my butts in gear and to work on something grander. Jim brought us
years of experience and a writing flair that we could have hardly imagined.
With the core documentation team established, we embarked on a plan for the creation
of volumes of Asterisk knowledge, eventually to lead to a complete library and a wealth
of information. This book is essentially the beginning of that dream.
Firstly and mostly, I have to thank my parents, Rick and Carol, for always supporting
my efforts, allowing me to realize my dreams, and always putting my needs ahead of
theirs. Without their vision, understanding, and insight into the future, it would have
been impossible to have accomplished what I have. I love you both very much!
I’d like to thank Felix Carapaica and Bill Farkas of the Sheridan Institute of Technology
for their dedication to the advancement of knowledge. Their teaching has complemen-
ted my prior learning, and has allowed me to expand my understanding of routing and
telecommunications exponentially.
There are far too many people to thank individually, but of particular importance, the
following people were, and are, the most influential to my understanding of Asterisk:
Joshua Colp, Tilghman Lesher, Russell Bryant, Steve Murphy, Olle Johansson, Steven
Sokol, Brian K. West, John Todd, and William Suffill, for my very first VoIP phone
(which I use to this day!). And for those who I said I’d mention in the book…thanks!
And of course, I must thank Jared Smith and Jim Van Meggelen for having the vision
and understanding of how important documentation really is—all of this would have
been impossible without you.

Jared Smith

I first started working with Asterisk in the spring of 2002. I had recently started a new
job with a market research company, and ended up taking a long road trip to a remote
call center with the CIO. On the long drive home we talked about innovation in tel-
ephony, and he mentioned a little open source telephony project he had heard of called
Asterisk. Over the next few months, I was able to talk the company into buying a
developer’s kit from Digium and started playing with Asterisk on company time.
During the next few months, I became more and more involved with the Asterisk com-
munity. I read the mailing lists. I scoured the archives. I hung out in the IRC channel,
just hoping to find nuggets of Asterisk knowledge. As time went on, I was finally able
to figure out enough to get Asterisk up and running.
That’s when the real fun began.
With the help of the CIO and the approval of the CEO, we moved forward with plans
to move our entire telecom infrastructure to Asterisk, including our corporate office

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