This book is intended to be gentle toward those new to Asterisk, but we assume that you’re familiar with basic Linux administration, networking, and other IT disciplines. If not, we encourage you to explore the vast and wonderful library of books that O’Reilly publishes on these subjects. We also assume you’re fairly new to telecommunications (both traditional switched telephony and the new world of Voice over IP).

However, this book will also be useful for the more experienced Asterisk administrator. We ourselves use the book as a reference for features that we haven’t used for a while.