Asterisk 1.8 will be the next major release of Asterisk with Long Term Support. It has been under heavy development for a while now. The first beta release of Asterisk 1.8 will be available by the end of July 2010.
There are many exciting features in Asterisk 1.8. Here are just a couple of the more recent changes that have been merged in:
- IPv6: Asterisk 1.8 will have IPv6 support for SIP and RTP.
- SRTP: Asterisk 1.8 will have support for secure RTP to allow the media to be encrypted for a SIP call.
The list of new features is quite long. Take a look for a list of what is in Asterisk trunk (which will soon become Asterisk 1.8).
When Asterisk 1.8 is available as a beta and release candidate, please help by testing things out to help make this the best release yet!
Russell Bryant 
Finally! Can’t wait to test the beta…
Those 2 recent merges you mention happen to be 2 things we’ve been looking forward to for a long time!
So this is great news! – if everything works as it should, Asterisk 1.8 will be a very interesting release. I’m checking out the whole changes document now.
Thanks for posting this! You should update your blog more often. 😉