[Freeswitch-users] Documentation suggestion

[Michael Collins]

On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 3:10 AM, Robert Smith <
robert.m.t.smith at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Michael Collins wrote:
>
> > And thank you!  We appreciate it when people make suggestions about
> > documentation.  Everyone wants the program to do something but precious
> > few people offer feedback on getting the system documented.  Please
> > continue offering suggestions.
>
> I speak as someone new to telephony applications, being asked to
> investigate them for our business model. As I (we) are researching
> software switches and IVRs we naturally installed Asterisk but found a
> problem. While searching for answers we found a list of soft switches on
> voip-info which led here.
>
> However, the learning curve is substantial to someone outside of
> telephony. May I suggest that someone provides a simple to understand
> page listing call flow from a PSTN and out to a PSTN, for example?
> Simply working out what functionality exists and how it is intended to
> be used would make an excellent starting point. Simple things like
> explaining the difference between users and extensions.
>
> Agreed much of this is not your responsibility. However for take-up to
> be effective by a wide audience such guidance would be a serious boost.
>
> R.
>
>
Robert,

Your input is appreciated.  At this point I don't have anything to offer as
far as the getting started in telephony.  One thing I can do is recommend
the chapter 7 of the Asterisk book: Asterisk - The Future of Telephony.  I
had the privilege of speaking with one of the authors just a few minutes ago
here at Cluecon.  (Jim Van Meggelen.)  He's an old PBX guy so he knows PSTN
very well.  You can download the PDF of the newest edition of the "TFOT"
book here:
http://asteriskdocs.org/

I can also recommend chapter 2 - Preparing a system for Asterisk and chapter
8 - Protocols for VoIP.  They contain lots of information that is general in
nature and not Asterisk-specifc.  Chapter 2 talks a lot about the computer
itself and the environment, PCI slot types, etc.  Chapter 8 discusses SIP,
SDP, IAX2, etc. and is a good place to get some information on VoIP in
general.

I the meantime I will start gathering ideas on adding to our "other
resources" page on the wiki.  I'm sure that we will start seeing a lot more
non-telecom-experienced visitors to freeswitch.org and we absolutely don't
want to alienate them.  Even if we don't have all the answers (I'm sure we
don't) we still want to help people find the answers and that definitely
includes pointing to other resources.

To the community in general: If you have books/links/resources that help(ed)
you with telecom/datacom then please post them here in this thread.  From
there we can organize a page or pages on the wiki that will index the
relevant topics.  As usual, ideas are welcomed from the community.

-MC
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