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Meet John Todd, One true "Unsung Hero" of TED. |
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John Todd plays a critical role in the success of TED, and enables people like myself to participate and enjoy the conference. So what does he do? He volunteers his time to create the "magic" of wireless internet connectivity for TED. This enables myself, and hundreds of other TEDizens keep up with our busy personal and professional lives while at TED. I've told many people that the "reason I came back to TED" was the wireless network -- John is my hero.
When not at TED, John is a networking and VoIP consultant, specializing in Asterisk implementations. He also develops vehicle tracking systems, and helps manage a non-profit SIP VoIP network (INOC-DBA). He does not sleep.
Here is an sample of John's writing on the integration of VoIP (voice over IP AKA "an internet phone call) and POTS (plain old telephone service). He is an expert by my favorite definition -- "Someone who knows more and more, about less and less." If you are deeply interested, you can read the entire article at the link at the end of this page.
VoIP and POTS Integration with Asterisk
by John Todd
01/22/2004
VoIP and POTS Integration with Asterisk
In my last article on Asterisk, I demonstrated how to build a very basic two-line PBX (Private Branch eXchange) with Asterisk and two SIP clients. Asterisk is an open source PBX replacement system, which does in software what many expensive PBX systems do in custom hardware. Voicemail, voicemail/email forwarding, call forwarding, voice menus, multi-ring -- these are just a few of the hundreds of features that Asterisk offers.
In the previous example, I created a small system that allows two people connected to the same Asterisk system to talk to each other, but obviously this is insufficient for most business needs. The goal of a PBX is not just to connect people inside of the office to each other, but also to connect those people to external endpoints, traditionally on the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network -- the phone system.) As Asterisk is a VoIP platform (or an Internet PBX: IPBX) it would also make sense if our PBX was able to accept calls from SIP clients or gateways elsewhere on the Internet, as those are growing methods of call delivery. Both inbound and outbound calls from the PSTN and from the Internet (via SIP) must find their way to the right destinations.
This article will demonstrate how to configure our system so that it can receive calls from other SIP clients elsewhere on the Internet. I'll also cover the installation of an FXO card into our Asterisk server, to enable call termination and origination to the PSTN on our existing analog line. Finally, I'll configure our system to use an Internet-based long-distance service provider at a fraction of the cost of traditional long distance....read the rest of this article at; http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/01/22/asterisk2.html
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