The road to this book is a long one—nearly three years in the making. Back when I started using Asterisk, possibly much like you, I didn't know anything about Asterisk, very little about traditional telephony and even less about voice over IP. I delved right into this new and very exciting world and took in all I could. For two months during a co-op term, for which I couldn't immediately find work, I absorbed as much as I could, asking questions, trying things and seeing what the system could do. Unfortunately very little to no documentation existed for Asterisk aside from some dialplan examples I was able to find by John Todd and having questions answered by Brian K. West on IRC. Of course, this method wasn't going to scale.

Not being much of a coder, I wanted to contribute something back to the community, and what do coders hate doing more than anything? Documentation! So I started The Asterisk Documentation Assignment (TADA), a basic outline with some information for the beginnings of a book.

Shortly after releasing it on my website, an intelligent fellow by the name of Jared Smith introduced himself. He had similar aspirations for creating a "dead-tree" format book for the community, and we humbly started the Asterisk Documentation Project. Jared setup a simple web site at http://www.asteriskdocs.org, a CVS server and the very first DocBook formatted version of a book for Asterisk. From there we started filling in information, and soon had information submitted by a number of members of the community.

In June of 2004, an animated chap by the name of Jim Van Meggelen started showing up on the mailing lists, and contributing lots of information and documentation - this was definitely a guy we wanted on our team! Jim had the vision and the drive to really get Jared and my butts in gear and to work on something grander. Jim brought us years of experience and a writing flair which we could hardly have imagined.

With the core documentation team established, we embarked on a plan for the creation of volumes of Asterisk knowledge, eventually to lead to a complete library and wealth of information. This book is essentially the beginning of that dream.

Firstly and mostly, I have to thank my parents, Rick and Carol for always supporting my efforts, allowing me to realize my dreams, and always putting my needs ahead of theirs. Without their vision, understanding and insight into the future, it would have been impossible to have accomplished what I have. I love you both very much!

I'd like to thank Felix Carapaica and Bill Farkas of the Sheridan Institute of Technology for their dedication to the advancement of knowledge. Their teaching has complemented my prior learning, and has allowed me to expand my understanding of routing and telecommunications exponentially.

There are far too many people to thank individually, but of particular importance, the following people were, and are, the most influential to my understanding of Asterisk:, Olle Johansson, Steven Sokol, Joshua Colp, Brian K. West, John Todd, Tilghman Lesher—and William Suffill for my very first VoIP phone (which I use to this day!). And for those who I said I'd mention in the book, thanks!

And of course, I must thank Jared Smith and Jim Van Meggelen for having the vision and understanding of how important documentation really is—all of this would have been impossible without you.