Introduction

For years, telephone networks were run by large companies spending billions of dollars to set up systems that connected to one another over wires, radios, and microwaves. Large machines, filling entire buildings, allowed people to talk to each other over great distances. As the computer revolution progressed, the machines got smaller and more efficient, but still they were almost exclusively the domain of a small sect of companies.

Enter Asterisk Asterisk has taken the power of the open-source software movement and brought it to the land of telephony. Much like how open source has proven that users don t need to rely on commercial companies for software, Asterisk has proven that users don t need to rely on commercial telephone companies for telephone systems. Open-source software allows you to be free of vendor lock-in, save money on support, use open standards, and change the software to suit your unique problems if the need arises. Looking at the traditional Private Branch Exchange (PBX) market, vendor lock-in is all too common, vendors charge exorbitant fees for support, and all too often the PBX you buy is a cookie-cutter solution with little to no customization options. It is common for people to think that their PBX is a black box that handles telephone calls. In reality, it is a bunch of computing equipment running a highly specialized software package. Open-source software can replace that customized software just as easily as it can replace any other software.

Asterisk is a veritable Swiss Army...