Chapter 9: Asterisk

Once upon a time, there was a boy.
...with a computer
...and a phone.
This simple beginning begat much trouble!
Mark Spencer
Foreword to Asterisk: The Future of Telephony

Overview

The first version of the Asterisk open -source PBX was written by Mark Spencer in 1999 and is sponsored by Digium. The name , Asterisk, springs from the use of the asterisk character (in other words, *) in computer programming. It is the wildcard character: it matches anything, just as Asterisk can connect to many different interfaces.

Note 

Experts from Digium reviewed and provided feedback on this chapter. They provided valuable input that made this chapter more complete and useful. They, however, did not provide a vendor comment.