What is Asterisk?
Asterisk, the world's most popular open source communications project, is free, open source software that converts an ordinary computer into a communications server. Asterisk makes it simple to create and deploy a wide range of telephony applications and services, including IP PBXs (Private Branch Exchange), VoIP gateways and call centre systems.
Asterisk is released as open source under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and it is available for download free of charge. Asterisk is the leading open source telephony project and the Asterisk community has been ranked as a key factor in the growth of VoIP.
What Does Asterisk Do?
Asterisk is a modular system that include all the modules you may ever require to create a complete communications system. Asterisk includes all the building blocks needed to create a PBX system, an IVR system (interactive voice response) or virtually any other kind of communications solution. The "blocks" in the kit include:
- Drivers for various VoIP protocols.
- Drivers for PSTN interface cards and devices.
- Routing and call handling for incoming calls.
- Outbound call generation and routing.
- Media management functions (record, play, generate tone, etc.).
- Call detail recording for accounting and billing.
- Single and mult-party call bridging.
- Call recording and monitoring functions.
- Integrated "Dialplan" scripting for call processing.
- Speech synthesis (aka "text-to-speech") in various languages and dialects using third party engines.
- Speech recognition in various languages using third party recognition engines.
