Digium Announces Speakers for AstriCon 2010

Digium, which has created Asterisk (News - Alert), the most widely used open source telephony software, announced that AstriCon 2010, the seventh annual conference and exhibition devoted to the open source Asterisk platform, is quickly taking form with a number of well-known speakers on a range of technical and business topics confirmed.

The discussions will focus on the future of Asterisk, Internet Protocol version 6 or “Ipv6,” Session Initiation Protocol or “SIP” security and more.

“This year's AstriCon will be one of the most technically oriented ever, and will address issues that software developers, enterprise IT professionals, call center and CRM developers, and integrators and resellers face when creating custom telephony systems,” John Todd (News - Alert), Asterisk open source community director, said.

Sandro Gauci, the author of “SIPVicious,” one of the most popular brute-force attack test kit systems for SIP platforms, will talk on “Just How Vulnerable is Your Phone (News - Alert) System?” He’ll talk about different attack methods, vulnerabilities administrators should understand and how to mitigate these issues on Asterisk.

Jim Kerr, senior director, Orbitz Worldwide, will discuss “Orbitz and Asterisk: How We Did It.” Orbitz, a leading global online travel company, has implemented Asterisk to handle customer calls. Kerr will discuss how the huge travel management agency integrated the platform with its legacy system, deployed it across call centers and achieved PCI security compliance.

Simon Perreault, a consultant at Viagenie, will speak on “IPv6 in Asterisk 1.8.” Viagenie is a consulting and research and development firm specialized in advanced computer networking technologies, such as IP networks and protocols, IPv6, VoIP, IP security, IP routing, internationalization and space networking.

Asterisk will support IPv6 in 1.8, and Simon will talk about the changes, configuration requirements and fundamentals of IPv6 required to get Asterisk running. As part of a double-long session, he will walk through configuration of an entire platform on a purely IPv6 network.

Russell Bryant (News - Alert), who leads the open source Asterisk development at Digium, will deliver “Asterisk Development Update.” Bryant will detail the developments happened last year and what features and functions are coming soon.

Jim Van Meggelen, one of the co-authors of the book, “Asterisk: The Future of Telephony” will speak on “Connecting Systems Together.” Meggelen’s latest area of focus involves connecting disparate Asterisk systems.

At AstriCon 2010, Meggelen will address issues like, “How to manage endpoints?” “What routing method should be used to connect offices?” “How about connecting Asterisk to global routing networks of other organizations?”

Another attraction of the conference is “Ask the Experts” where a panel of Digium sales engineers, support staff and engineers will give some short examples of the toughest problems they’ve encountered and solved, and then the audience will be invited to throw out their most difficult problems.

Todd said Digium will announce the conference keynotes shortly and the company hopes to meet hundreds of Asterisk community members at the event. “In conjunction with the great speakers and content, I really look forward to the spontaneous conversation and idea sharing that is what makes the conference the highlight of the year for me, and I hope for everyone else.”

AstriCon will be held just outside Washington, D.C., from October 26-28, 2010, at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center. Online registration is accepted at AstriCon website.

In a recent development on Asterisk, Panasonic announced Digium Asterisk certification for its new TGP500 series SIP DECT (News - Alert)-based cordless phone system. Read more about this product in this blog.

Rajani Baburajan is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Rajani's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Juliana Kenny