This friendly, clear tutorial takes a pragmatic approach to developing Asterisk applications, helping you to find the best solutions for your needs. Unlike most books, which simply show you how to do or what to do, this book tries to show you: why to do? thus explaining the logic behind certain Asterisk development paradigms. This book is intended for developers wishing to utilize Asterisk, system administrators wishing to gain better control over their Asterisk installation, and telephony service providers wishing to deploy Asterisk-based solutions to their infrastructure. You are expected to have some experience with Asterisk and a basic understanding of programming. No knowledge of Asterisk programming is required.