User guide

During the review we have looked into three major areas:
• Specialized Asterisk software distributions including graphical configuration tools (The Asterisk
GUI-friendly projects)
• Installing Asterisk using virtualization (Asterisk & VMware)
• Specialized PBX hardware - Asterisk Appliances
As any other booming technology you will find difficult to catch up with what is going on and what
projects are around. Many of the tools have changed name during the last years and many projects
build their solutions based on existing work. During the preparation of this document we have identify a
few aspects that limit the dissemination of open telephony (See Section 2: Limiting factor for IP
telephony disemmination). One of those limiting factors is to cope with all the technical jargon and have
a clear picture of the existing initiatives and the interaction between them. We have included a short
description of some of those projects (Section 3 & 4: The jargon and the GUI-friendly projects) so you
can start with a better understanding of what is going on.
12.2 Limiting factors for IP telephony disemmination
There are dozens of efforts built around Asterisk. From management tools to configure asterisk
installed in small devices to business oriented solutions aim to run in large computer farms. Most of the
solutions offer a free (but functional) version and a commercial release that targets very specific market
niches.
During the preparation of this document, we have reviewed several of those initiatives front the point of
view of an end-user approaching IP telephony. During the review we tried to identify what are the
limiting factors for the disemmination of the “open“ IP Telephony knowledge in developed and
developing countries. Here there is a few of the ideas that came up after the review.
• Most of the efforts do not provide a simple way for the users to get started, documentation (if
any) is the result of a compilation of menu's descriptions and options rather than focusing on
certain scenarios and how to get them implemented.
• Very few projects are designed with multi-lingual support in mind and very little localization has
been done when it comes to documentation.
• Manuals and documents very seldom include illustrative graphics as layouts of IP and
telephony networks, scenarios, hardware, etc.
• There is a high level of information overload and low signal-to-noise ratio that make it difficult to
identify what information is relevant.
Page 46 TRICALCAR | www.wilac.net/tricalcar – Version: February 2008