First things first, but not necessarily
in that order.
Doctor Who
Asterisk is very different from other, more traditional, PBXs in that
the dialplan in Asterisk treats all incoming channels in essentially the
same manner, rather than separating them into stations, trunks, peripheral
modules, and so forth.
In a traditional PBX, there is a logical
difference between stations (telephone sets) and trunks (resources that
connect to the outside world). This limitation makes creative routing in
traditional PBXs very difficult or impossible.
Asterisk, on the other hand, does not have
an internal concept of trunks or stations. In Asterisk, everything that
comes into or goes out of the system passes through a channel of some sort.
There are many different kinds of channels; however, the Asterisk dialplan
handles all channels in a similar manner, which means that, for example, an
internal user can exist on the end of an external trunk (e.g., a cell phone)
and be treated by the dialplan in exactly the same manner as that user would
be if they were on an internal extension. Unless you have worked with a
traditional PBX,1 it may not be immediately obvious how powerful and liberating
this is. Figure 2-1 illustrates the
differences between the two architectures.
Figure 2-1. Asterisk versus PBX architecture
Modules
Asterisk is built on modules. A module is a loadable component ...
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