Practical Asterisk 1.4 and 1.6: From Beginner to Expert

3. Dialplan Fundamentals

The dialplan is the heart of Asterisk, and everything it does begins here.

In Asterisk 1.4, two important files in /etc/asterisk make up the dialplan. The first is extensions.conf, which uses the original and Digium-recommended priority model. The second is extensions.ael, which uses the newer Asterisk Extensions Language; we’ll look at that in more detail in a separate chapter. For now, we’ll use the traditional priority model because even in 1.4 and 1.6 extensions.ael is converted into priority format and added to extensions.conf when Asterisk is started.¹

1. The exact definition of dialplan is a matter of some debate in the telephony world. In this book, we use the word in its Asterisk-specific sense.

Note

Should ...