OT: "skype" anyone?

[Janina Sajka]

Hi, Chuck:

I have had Asterisk up and working at one time. At the moment, I'm
waiting for a hardware upgrade on the machine I plan to use for it. I am
by no means an expert, or even a knowledgable user of Asterisk. I'm very
much a beginner. However, there are Asterisk experts among us. We're all
in the same boat with those awful docs.

I think the hardest issue with Asterisk would be there in any case,
whatever the app. Voice telephone jargon is very different. I must
confess I have no idea what they mean most of the time.

However, here's what I do know for a certainty:

Because Asterisk is configurable in plain ASCII files and operable from
the CLI, it's as accessible as we could want--except for the docs, of
course.

It will do anything a telephone switch will do, assuming you have the
hardware to support it and the knowledge to set it up.

It will provide incoming and outbound voice telephone services over the
Internet. Yes, that means you can configure a way for other people with
IP phones to call you--and leave voice mail, if you set that up via the
Asterisk switch. However, this does not mean that somebody with a plain
old phone from the plain old telephone company can call you on that
number--unless you get service from a provider like Vonage, Voice-Pulse,
etc., etc.Similarly, if you get outbound service with a provider like
VoipJet or Voice-Pulse, you can call that plain old telephone from the
plain old telephone company.

So, bottom line ... You can arrange to call many IP phones without a
service contract and with fee. The meaning of DUNDI is that you will
eventuallly be able to call anyone with an IP phone without fee. This is
very much like what we lived through with email. Remember the bad old
days when Compuserve mail wouldn't reach Delphi or The Source? Remember
leaving mail on BBS systems and calling each one in turn to check each
box? Remember the days of email before the Internet just inter-connected
us all? Well, the same thing happened with telephones about a hundred
years ago, and is now happening again with voice telephone services via
the Internet.

Just to close out this quick tour, what you can do with your Asterisk
server is absolutely everything you can do with a phone switch--as I
said. Voice mail, conferences, music on hold, press 1 for Chuck, 2 for
Tech Support, 3 for whatever, etc., etc., etc.

Chuck Hallenbeck writes:
> On Wed, 24 Nov 2004, Janina Sajka wrote:
> 
> >You miss the implication of DUNDI.
> 
> Hi Janina,
> 
> Do you use asterisk? If so, could you tell me what you use it for and
> what special hardware interfaces you use with it? I grabbed it and
> installed it but I don't know what the hell I am doing, that's for sure.
> The docs leave a lot to be desired.
> 
> Chuck
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> The Moon is Waxing Gibbous (97% of Full)
> "Things are in the saddle, and they ride mankind." R W Emerson
> Speakfreely hhs48.com:2074, home page http://www.mhcable.com/~chuckh
> 
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-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Chair
				Accessibility Workgroup
				Free Standards Group (FSG)

janina at freestandards.org	Phone: +1 202.494.7040