Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

AsteriskNOW 1.0.1 my favorite Asterisk appliance (in software form) since Asterisk@home deviated from the path and began to spy on us, unsuspecting Trixbox users without declaring so. (I have replaced all my Asterisk@home and Trixbox installations, closer to 20 to AsteriskNOW, since that incident even though they have said that it was corrected.) I am also testing out PBX in a Flash by Nerd Vittles. I do not mind using or testing Trixbox on my experimental rigs but when it comes to people who trust me, my customers, I want to be able to say that my work is clean. And that I have given them the best possible solution.After the spying trouble, I had to go to all those people, apologize for giving them faulty solutions and install AsteriskNOW, which was in beta state then.
Since the AsteriskNOW 1.0.1 was released, I have upgraded all my installations to newer version and all are happy campers now. But due to the needs of some of them and support needs, I will have to convert some of them to full blown Asterisk and hand them over to better capable people for support.
Most of the installations are used to VoIP enable legacy PBXs and as VoIP solutions for small ventures that spawn all over bay area. But these startups change for better and have upgraded with Asterisk Appliance from Digium and 3Com. Some have opted to use Asterisk Business Edition, the commercial counterpart of AsteriskNOW.
I have some of these installations also in some of the high end educational institutions and two in very far away lands that I have not physically seen since 2005.
What else could you use AsteriskNOW for totally hip voice mail system with IVR functions. May be for that conference system with developers and clients strewn all over the world.
Yes all those are very possible and have been made really ease with the AsteriskNOW 1.0.1 release.

Since the last beta release there were some addons and updates were added, although not an exhaustive list following stand out the best;

• Over 1000 updates and improvements to the GUI
• Updated to Asterisk release 1.4.17
• Updated to Zaptel release 1.4.8
• Updated Linux Kernel 2.6.22
• Polycom phone auto-provisioning
• Improved package management and update capabilities
• Open Settlement Protocol
• The phone provisioning module

You can download the release here and learn more about the release here.

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

VoIP IP Telephony @ http://snapvoip.blogspot.com
What can I say about this statementby Sean Michael Kerner, "The Future of Open Source VoIP is Asterisk 1.6"
I do not think that the whole future of VoIP lies on Asterisk. But a part of it will be. Asterisk has already made a big stir in the world of VoIP and IPPBX’s. Specially the SMB’s and even individual house holds use Asterisk for their telephony uses. I have total of four Asterisk servers running at any time. One is in my office which is actually my secretary! One at my Campus office, one at my home and the fourth for my development and experiments. This in addition to evangelical work I have done and promoted small business to use it.
I usually try to educate users to manage their own Asterisk servers rather than relying on me. I introduce them to all the online support tools and people who really need hand holding I direct them to Digium’s commercial support. But most of them realize that Asterisk is not rocket science. People who were afraid of Linux, smile once they see how easy it is to manage the Asterisk server running on Linux. That is mostly AsteriskNOW.org and AsteriskNow. But all I can say is, with proper care and attension, Aterisk will grow in you while, at the same time being there when ever you need it.

Now back to the article,
The following staments; "

As part of the development process, Asterisk developers have overhauled how they deal with security issues. Fleming boasted that security issues are handled by a core team that address issues 24 to 48 hours from the initial report.

There is also now a formal Asterisk Project Security Advisory reporting system that will provide full disclosure into reported issues and what Asterisk is doing to fix issues.

Fleming admitted that Asterisk hasn’t done a great job of making users aware of security advisories, but the new effort is an attempt to do better.

"One of the benefits of open source is that there are more people using our code and a lot more people looking at our code and telling us when things are wrong," Fleming said.

"No one gets to look at the code for Nortel’s systems and there are probably just as many vulnerabilities there but you only hear about it when it gets exploited.""

There it summarizes all I wants, Security! Right Now first thing I advise to install together with Asterisk is a firewall. But still we have had issues with security.

Thank Sean, for making me think! I think Asterisk has a great future. We need to scale it higher.

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

VoIP IP Telephony @ http://snapvoip.blogspot.com

The VON 2007 was a blast. Among many other things that I spent my two days at VON, I noticed very well how AsteriskNOW is coming out in full force. There were controversies related to Trixbox etc, but AsteriskNOW has opened the IPPBX application to thousands more users who would have stayed away due to the complexities of running Asterisk.
Now that the GUI management tool is providing a way to manage most of the Asterisk tasks, more and more people will be searching the value of Asterisk, through AsteriskNOW. According to official reports, there were more than 2,000 Downloads a Day of AsteriskNOW Beta since it’s release.
The new beta version of AsteriskNOW, AsteriskNOW beta 5 is slated to be the the final beta leading up to Q2 availability of AsteriskNOW 1.0. Customers can deploy AsteriskNOW in minutes to start using Asterisk.
I deployed an AsteriskNOW server with Digium hardware, two TDM400P cards, in less than 20 minutes. The deployment was in a real world scenario, PBX, IPPBX for a 6 person startup. Although there are Linux experts in the group, the groups receptionist, handles and manages AsteriskNOW.
What hardware did they use? well $299 Fry’s PC with an additional hard drive (Used for mirroring).

Links;
Digium’s press release on AsteriskNOW
AsteriskNOW, go get it

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

VoIP IP Telephony @ http://snapvoip.blogspot.com

I was reading Sinologic article that lead me to this discovery. It seems that the TrixBox replacement have come to the open source arena. The AsteriskNow, TrixBox and the WorxBox have a lot in common.

See the following by the news releases at WorxBox project site which I have provided links below.
"Welcome to Worxbox®, The Asterisk Server with the Worx®! The goal of the Worxbox® project is to provide a production quality Open-Source Unified Communications Server that’s easy to build, configure and manage. WorxBox® installs all the software needed to deploy a fully functional Asterisk® based PBX and creates a basic configuration which can then be easily optimized to meet the requirements of almost any business.

WorxBox® is a no-compromise, next-generation phone system that can scale to support several hundred users, but it doesn’t stop there. Worxbox® also integrates Asterisk® with a comprehensive suite of supporting and complementary web, messaging, networking and business productivity modules. In fact, for many small businesses Worxbox® may be the only server they need!"

The functionalities also shows some similarities;
WorxBox® Features:

* Complete CentOS Linux operating system
* MySQL Database
* Fully-featured Asterisk PBX
* SugarCRM
* Alfresco Document Manager
* Joomla! Web Content Management System
* Apache Webserver
* Zimbra Collaboration Suite
* DHCP, SMTP, FTP server
* Unified Messaging (E-Mail, Voice-Mail, Fax-Mail)
* Shorewall Router and Firewall (Requires 2 or more NIC)
* Webmin Server Managment
* Lots of Nifty Extras!

Easy Administration:

* Web-based Management of Server and PBX Functions
* Secure Remote Administration
* Centralized provisioning and management of IP telephones

So now you have three choices, WorxBox, AsteriskNow and TrixBox.

Links;
Sinologic.net article
WorXBox Project
Sourceforge WorxBox site

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

Although many times I have gone through the same procedure, quite a few times, it is good to see and hear Mark. Hello people it is this easy, try it out. Is this the end of TrixBox? I don’t think so! My TrixBox still got a few more tricks under it’s sleeves. But I think I will follow Mark sooner or later.

Links;
AsteriskNow
Trixbox

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

Asterisk has released information about a new release of Zaptel 1.2.12 and Asterisk 1.2.14 together with Zaptel 1.4.0-beta3 and Asterisk 1.4.0-beta4.
According to the Asterisk Development Team, This will very likely be the last beta release of Asterisk 1.4 before the final release, which is targeted for next Friday.

Also please check Asterisknow for Asterisknow versions of the above. Links at the end.

Here is the complete news release;

Zaptel 1.2.12 Released

The Asterisk Development Team is pleased to announce the release of Zaptel 1.2.12.

This release contains a number of updates:

* compatibility with Linux kernel 2.6.19
* bug fixes to the Xorcom Astribank driver (XPP)
* various other bug fixes

Thanks for supporting Asterisk and Zaptel!

Asterisk 1.2.14 Released

The Asterisk Development Team is pleased to announce the release of Asterisk 1.2.14.

This release contains a number of updates:

* a bug fix for the ExternalIVR application and addition of ’silence’ sound files to support it
* various SIP interoperability improvements
* memory and dialog leaks in the SIP channel driver
* a fix to music-on-hold random mode that was not really random
* an improvement to app_voicemail to ensure that the message duration is properly included in email notifications when voicemail messages are forwarded
* corrected a segfault issue during reload of the PostgreSQL CDR driver
* a change to no longer include a header file that does not exist on Linux kernel 2.6.18 (and caused a problem on Fedora Core 6)
* many other bug fixes

Thanks for supporting Asterisk and Zaptel!

Zaptel 1.4.0-beta3 Released

The Asterisk Development Team is pleased to announce the release of Zaptel 1.4.0-beta3.

This release contains a number of updates:

* compatibility with Linux kernel 2.6.19
* bug fixes to the Xorcom Astribank driver (XPP)
* support for Digium’s TE110P Rev C, VPMOCT064 and new revisions of the S110M and S400M FXS modules
* various other bug fixes

Thanks for supporting Asterisk and Zaptel!

Asterisk 1.4.0-beta4 Released

The Asterisk Development Team is pleased to announce the release of Asterisk 1.4.0-beta4.

This release contains a number of updates:

* a bug fix for the ExternalIVR application and addition of ’silence’ sound files to support it
* various SIP interoperability improvements
* memory and dialog leaks in the SIP channel driver
* a fix to music-on-hold random mode that was not really random
* an improvement to app_voicemail to ensure that the message duration is properly included in email notifications when voicemail messages are forwarded
* corrected a segfault issue during reload of the PostgreSQL CDR driver
* a change to no longer include a header file that does not exist on Linux kernel 2.6.18 (and caused a problem on Fedora Core 6)
* logging of dynamic queue member addition and removal in queue_log
* a minor redesign of many CLI commands to be more similar to previous Asterisk releases
* significant improvements to IMAP storage support for voicemail
* a change to the SIP channel to avoid offering formats (codecs) that cannot be transcoded due to lack of available transcoders (along with dynamic activation/deactivation of transcoders)
* support for G.722 16KHz (wideband) audio passthrough, recording and playback
* support for standard prompts in G.722 format
* many other bug fixes

Some of the changes in this release are behavior modifications from the last release; please review the UPGRADE.txt file.

This will very likely be the last beta release of Asterisk 1.4 before the final release, which is targeted for next Friday.

Thanks for supporting Asterisk and Zaptel!

Links;
Asterisk IP PBX And Zaptel

Asterisknow

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

I think it is as important as explaining GPL v.2.0 or GPL 3.0, to explain to people that open source is a also a business model. In a business people expect to make money with the products/services they provide.
But when it came to Asteisk, which I have known since it’s humble beginning. I met Mark Spenser, the creator of this project, once at a Linux world expo, a long time ago. I am sorry to say that not many people were around the booth but Mark was pretty enthusiastic and carried me through all the details. He had it all together with all the hardware and software running, allowing to make demo calls through a real life PBX.
One interesting thing about trademark was, There was a fork of Asterisk at that time, Asterisk-NG if I recall right. I asked about it from Mark, and his answer was a shake of his shoulders and said "yeah, I heard about it". I think it was appropriate response at that time, as he was paying more attention to the project/product than to business and copy rights or trademarks.
But now Asterisk is vastly different. It is a business and as with any business, you start hiring lawyers, and lawyers will always find things to do. And somethings are not pleasant but you got to do it.
Last week I read a few articles about asterisk@home. and one esteemed writer that I read regularly, referring to the matter as "dark side of Asterisk". Smith on VOIP got most of it right. But if he had referred to recent DIGG and DIGGAME saga, he would have understood the legal process.
I am not a lawyer (IANAL) and what I understood is that if you do not try to protect even attempt to protect your copyrights or trademarks, you might loose them, in a court, in the future. You have to show evidence that you did take steps to protect your trademark.
So Asterisk@home, a super project, that I use day to day, happened to be the target. It has a name too close to Asterisk, if asked from any one not familiar of the projects they might think Asterisk@home is a subproject of Asterisk.
I think it is right for Asterisk / Digium to go after Asterisk@home although not pleasant, the new name, Trixbox seem to be doing fine and the same following that Smith mentioned Asterisk@home, welcomed and enveloped the TrixBox.

I really do not see Smiths arguments but all I can say is open source projects are run by living people, who like money like Smith do. If his idea is only to write and inform people of VOIP, why Google ads and sponsored ads on his site? Because they make money and if Smith can earn some money while enjoying his writing all the better.
Asterisk / Digium did nothing much different, monetize their ideas. If Smith sees one of his articles copied word by word by a spam blog, I can only guess how he would feel. May be asterisk thought the same way.
Has Asterisk / Digium gone after OpenPBX? although it is based on Asterisk and does some aspects better than Asterisk, I don’t see Asterisk going after them legally or otherwise.
I prefer the writing on the subject by Alec Saunders, he sees the same issue as Smith does, but Alec’s article is more pleasant and to the point. Tom Keating also speaks of the same matter, and much closer to Smiths thinking.
Also remember that trixbox is under the arms of Fonality and Fonality is a direct competitor to Asterisk. Many analysts and writers have said that fonality might do better than Digium in the SMB IP PBX space, using Asterisk itself!

So you want the best answer! Ask yourself what would you do if you were Asterisk /Digium ? that is the best answer, whether it is right or wrong.
By the way people who feel sorry for Trixbox, write Trixbox (formally Asterisk@home), I do where ever it deems necessary it might help to let people know.

Another thing is selecting well known well used words as trademarks is not a good idea. Why do you think Microsoft settled with Lindows? food for your thoughts.

Links;
SmithonVOIP the darker side of digium
Alec Saunders Protecting tha Asterisk Brand
Tom Keating Who is redirecting trixbox web traffic

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

AsteriskNOW beta based on Asterisk 1.4 beta is available for download. In the past you may have wanted to install Asterisk for your VOIP IP Telephony needs. You also may have stopped on the tracks because your Linux installation did not go right or you lacked information to get your particular Linux distribution installed. Even after installing the Linux part of the process, you may have got lost due to loss of commands to get the whole thing working.
Fear no more! Installing Asterisk is no more the hard work it used to be. Digium in it’s good mind has released AsteriskNOW. AsteriskNOW takes new direction in distributing Asterisk. From AsteriskNOW website;

"AsteriskNOW includes all the Linux components necessary to run, debug and build Asterisk, and only those components. You no longer have to worry about kernel versions and package dependencies. Unlike other Linux distributions used to deploy Asterisk, no unnecessary components that might compromise security or performance are included.

One of the key features of AsteriskNOW is to focus on providing you with the easiest to install, fully-featured Linux distribution. Specifically for implementing and/or developing with new and old telephony solutions"

AsteriskNOW is packaged with rPath Linux Packaging system and uses Kickstart for installation. rPath, which I have written before, and using, is a heaven to Linux based appliance creators. With rPath you can build a appliance in no time. I am glad Digium took the rPath way.

If you do not have a preferred distribution of Linux currently installed on your PC system, you may choose to use Linux distribution that comes with AsteriskNOW. Another factor is that the AsteriskNOW download file is in ISO format. So you need to create CD with this using your favorite CD burning Software. Make sure that it supports *.ISO format. Most CD burning software does today. Once you have the CD ready, get you PC assigned to be the Asterisk IPPBX ready and we can begin the installation.

Install AsteriskNOW;

1. Insert your newly created AsteriskNOW CD into the CD-ROM drive of the PC.
2. Boot from the CD. by restarting the PC. A basic AsteriskNOW boot menu with several options will be provided. For the standard graphical installer, simply press . (I suggest to choose graphical install.
3. From here, follow the self-explanatory on-screen prompts to guide you through the installation process. AsteriskNOW suggests that you select "Express Install" and "Remove all Linux partitions on this system" So another reasons to use a bare machine or well backed up machine if you have important data.

Once the installation is done, you are ready to configure and run Asterisk Now.

Links;
AstriskNOW