Asterisk (software)

Its name comes from the asterisk (*) symbol for a signal used in DTMF signaling. Asterisk was created in 1999 by Mark Spencer of Digium, which, since 2018, has been a division of Sangoma Technologies Corporation. Originally designed for Linux, Asterisk runs on a variety of operating systems, including NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, macOS, and Solaris, and can be installed in embedded systems based on OpenWrt. The Asterisk software includes many features available in commercial and proprietary PBX systems: voice mail, conference calling, interactive voice response (phone menus), and automatic call distribution. Users can create new functionality by writing dial plan scripts in several of Asterisk's own extensions languages by adding custom loadable modules written in PHP or C or by implementing Asterisk Gateway Interface (AGI) programs using any programming language capable of communicating via the standard streams system (stdin and stdout) or by network TCP sockets. Asterisk supports several standard VOIP protocols, including the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP), and H.323. Asterisk supports most SIP telephones, acting both as registrar and back-to-back user agent. It can serve as a gateway between IP phones and the PSTN via T- or E-carrier interfaces or analog FXO cards if the DAHDI (Digium Asterisk Hardware Device Interface) library is installed.