New Asterisk Is Best Yet

Asterisk 11, the latest version of the renowned PBX open source software has just been released complete with a number of new and improved features and functionality, whilst still retaining the same tried and trusted framework which has helped to carve Asterisk a niche all of its own.

Firstly a little background information for those of you not too ‘au fait’ with what Asterisk is – let alone what it does. Asterisk was created in 1999 by Mark Spencer as a software implementation of a telephone Private Bank Exchange (PBX). Asterisk operates like any PBX system – by enabling attached telephones to make calls to one another as well as to other telephone services – with the exception that Asterisk is available under either a free software licence or a proprietary one.

Among the new features offered by Asterisk 11 is a facility to enable users to make phone calls directly via web browsers, a function made possible thanks to Asterisk 11’s support for Web Real-Time Communication (Web RTC) links. Internetnews.com’s senior estudior Sean Michael Kerner believes that: “Web RTC is something that holds amazing promise, and I strongly suspect that Asterisk 11 will be one of the defining infrastructure technologies that enables that promise to become a reality”.

Other Asterisk 11 features include a set of integrated technologies for establishing live media streams for software agents running behind firewalls, known as ‘Ice, Stun & Turn’ along
with ‘Motif’; a new channel driver specifically for supporting the Jingle protocol and ‘Google Talk’.

But despite all of the bonus features and potential offered by Asterisk, the fact that it is such a powerful and versatile piece of open source software means that it requires significant dedication to get it up and running, making it an unviable communication solution for the majority of businesses. For those few businesses who utilise Asterisk the benefits are obvious. But for the rest of the business world wanting to enter the Voip marketplace and receive the benefits of cheap and free phone calls, unrivalled audio quality and incredible versatility, simply choose a reputable Voip provider with a proven track record & ITSPA approval, such as VoIPstudio.