[asterisk-users] Zap Channels Collide (Incoming & Outgoing)

[Drew Gibson]

Eric Wieling wrote:
> Drew Gibson wrote:
>   
>> Eric Wieling wrote:
>>     
>>> Drew Gibson wrote:
>>>   
>>>       
>>>> I think the scary thing is that, for most people, basic knowledge of 
>>>> telephony was almost impossible to come by outside the opaque and 
>>>> secretive world of telco.
>>>>
>>>> That is until Asterisk came along!
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps there should be a regulatory requirement to read The Future of 
>>>> Telephony, cover to cover, before installing any Asterisk system! :-)
>>>>
>>>> http://www.asteriskdocs.org/
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> People that try to "wing it" and install Asterisk when they don't know 
>>> telecom just gives people a bad impression of Asterisk and VoIP in 
>>> general.  This helps nobody except the pocketbook of the consultant.
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>> but how else do they learn?
>>
>>     
>
> Books are one of the best resources, the Wiki is not *too* bad when it 
> comes to general telecom stuff.  You can also build prototype systems.
>   

That's why http://www.asteriskdocs.org/
Is there a better place to start?

> No, Asterisk did not suddenly unleash the gates of knowledge in telecom. 
>   All that information was available before Asterisk.  What was not 
> available was info on the specific inner workings of traditional PBXs.
>
> Asterisk and Digium did reduce the hardware cost of building a PBX.
>   

The knowledge may have been there but there was no "index". It was like 
saying to a Unix newbie "just use the man pages, it's all in there". But 
newbies don't know which command to look up!! (there is no index)

Asterisk reduced the cost of entry to the market by a several orders of 
magnitude.
This, in turn, allowed more folks to become technically "telephony 
literate".
Which, in turn again, made the knowledge exponentially easier to come by.

My start in telephony was thanks to 3Com and their efforts to promote 
VoIP in the mid to late 90's but it is from the Asterisk community that 
I've learned the most.

> Traidional telecom is actually fairly simple if you compare it with IP 
> PSTN/IP PBXs.  With an IP PBX like Asterisk you need to understand 
> telecom, IP networking (including routing, NAT, ports), Linux, as well 
> as Asterisk itself.
>
>   
If it helps, I feel the same contempt for the telephony guys trying to 
learn IP networking. But I try to remember that I have as much to learn 
in their field as they do in mine. (Afraid I'm not much good at humility 
either)  <grin!>

regards,

Drew

-- 
Drew Gibson

Systems Administrator
OANDA Corporation
www.oanda.com