[Asterisk-biz] Help with learing Asterisk for the real world..

[Robert Webb]

Hi all, hope this is not too off topic, but thought it fit 
better here than any of the other lists.

I am in the IT field with some telecommunications 
background knowledge. Mainly learning from when my father 
worked for a telco and from keeping up the old Nortel PBX 
here at work. My issue is that where I am employed they 
have no plans on the drawing board of every trying to go 
VoIP, espicially from an open source solution as they are 
Microsoft finatics, because they will not justify the cost 
nor the resources to research by buying hardware and 
testing.

So here is my delimma. I am running asterisk in my home 
running asterisk at home. I have no need for any of the 
advanced dial plans and setups like there are out there in 
the real world. But I want to gain more knowledge in 
setting up asterisk and programming it dial plans. I 
cannot afford T1 cards and other expensive gear off my 
persoanl budget.

Can anyone give some insight as to a good direction to go 
to try and learn all this. I will be finishing my MIS 
degree in August 2006 and then want to concentrate on 
learing some C programming so I can understand what is 
going on behind the scenes. It is just lately between 
school and work I have not had time to pick up trying to 
learn C and asterisk.

Sorry if too off-topic and no, I am not trying to get 
someone here to offer me a job. Only some insight into 
understanding and being proficient in setting up some real 
systems.


Regards,
Robert Webb