asterisk users - Dec 2005 - Re: [Asterisk-biz] Help with learning Asterisk for the real world..

Robert Webb wrote:
> 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@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

Not to be crass but cross posting to the asterisk-users list anyway.
This falls under the category of "read the fine manual" :)

You're a step up from those of us who started with no shred of knowledge 
of the telco world.
I recommend you look for an X100 clone on ebay. Should cost you less 
than the price of a movie ticket.
Go to voip-info.org and read up the rest of what you need to do there.
For show stoppers, you can ask live on #asterisk on freenode.net and of 
course, the asterisk-user's list.
You can also refer to the asterisk CLI for help, the installed docs, the 
asterisk documentation project and of course, google.

While learning C and becoming proficient enough to debug and contribute 
would be welcome, there's lots of testing going on and many other areas 
need improvement.

On the day you convince your employer that they can have a voip setup 
for probably less than the price of their yearly MS license, we would be 
glad to hear about it here.

Good luck!

-- 
JP Carballo

http://www.netfone2x.com
Bringing the world closer.

It might look like I'm doing nothing, but at the cellular level, I'm
really quite busy.