FOOD FOR THOUGHT Anybody ever go to a straight asterisk system?

[GomezAddams]

I just finished reading Asterisk - The Future of Telephony. I *highly* recommend it for anyone hacking around with PiaF! Even if you never plan on digging that far into the guts of asterisk, it still explains a lot of "hows" and "whys" of FreePBX. Considering it is free, you can't beat the price!

Anyway, after seeing how (relatively) easy it is to create entries in extension.conf when you don't have FreePBX running the show, I started thinking that maybe I'd be better served if I dump PiaF and FreePBX and just run asterisk on some stock linux distro. Two immediate advantages come to mind:

• A much easier upgrade path for the OS and asterisk. Just copy the files over and done (OK, I do realize that the asterisk authors like to "improve" the conf file syntax from time to time, but that's usually detailed pretty well in the readmes.)
• I wouldn't have FreePBX's fingers in everything to work around and worry about.

I realize I'd be losing lots of features, but they are things I don't normally use anyway. Anybody ever do this? Are there dragons lurking somewhere I'm missing?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking PiaF and FreePBX at all. They are both great works, and the developers and maintainers do a great job. I'm just thinking that, over all, straight asterisk might be a better fit for small, simple systems.

 

[Max Power]

I started with FreePBX and PBX in a flash. I've spent the last 8 months learning and customizing asterisk for a custom application.

In my opinion you have it backwards. Freepbx is much simpler for a small simple system. It's so easy to set up and configure especially with the distros. There is really no advantage that I can think of to using asterisk alone IMO.

While the dial plan and basic config files are relatively straight forward for basic applications they'd still require a lot more thought and effort than the GUI.

However if you want play around and learn asterisk there is no better way then to just dive in.

 

[wardmundy]

PIAF-Black is "pure Asterisk" with no FreePBX at the moment. It'll save you a lot of time without thwarting your pioneering spirit.

 

[GomezAddams]

PIAF-Black is "pure Asterisk" with no FreePBX at the moment. It'll save you a lot of time without thwarting your pioneering spirit.

Cool! Did not know this - I'll have to give it a shot!

 

[leemason]

When I first started with Asterisk I did simply use the "raw" product. But after a while it became quite difficult to maintain. Unless you are very scrupulous about commenting your code then it can be difficult to come back to it in 12 months time and remember why on earth you did it that way! So eventually I started to use Asterisk@home and the rest, as they say, is history!

 

[hbonath]

I've read that book a few times, I have a couple copies of the various editions.
I ran pure asterisk on a Mac OS X server since FreePBX wouldn't work on it- however I like to stick to FreePBX and then "enhance" it with some custom code where needed. i.e. need to create a special feature code that does something not available in a module. Add that to extensions_custom.conf and good to go.

 

[GomezAddams]

Speaking of which, does anyone know anything about the windows port of asterisk? Looks like the developers put a lot of work into it, then abandoned it. http://www.asteriskwin32.com/

 

[Brian Simmons]

I'm not sure why anyone would spend the time to try and port something like that to windows. With today's virtualization options, it seems to be a much better option would be to run a virtual box with PIAF (or whatever Asterisk flavor you desire) on it.

 

[mbellot]

There is really no advantage that I can think of to using asterisk alone IMO.

Overhead on a small setup.

I have seen "pure" asterisk running on some pretty low powered consumer routers, FreePBX would have been out of the question.

The RasPi is almost too slow, interacting with the FreePBX web GUI for setup/maintenance is painful. But once it's set up and mainly handling calls it does quite well.

 

[twinclouds]

I started to use FreePBX and PIAF a few years ago then transferred to plain Asterisk afterwards. The reason is that I was using Dockstar, a small ARM box, running Debian as the platform. I tried to find out how I can install Google Voice for call out with minimum effort. For that purpose, FreePBX is overkill and added unnecessary effort. I have been keeping using plain Asterisk ever since. I think the reason it suits me well is because I am using it for my home system, a few extensions, mainly for call out. In such an environment, only some basic Asterisk knowledge are needed. However, if you want a more sophisticated system, I guess FreeBBX and similar systems will be more suitable. Just my 2 cents.