Asterisk PBX Introduction

Asterisk is a complete open source PBX in software. It runs on Linux, BSD and MacOSX and provides all of the features you would expect from a PBX and many more. Asterisk does voice over IP (VOIP) in many protocols, and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware. VOIP or IP Telephony and also called Internet telephony, is the technology that makes it possible to have a telephone conversation where the signal is carried over the Internet or a dedicated network in Internet Protocol (IP) packets, instead of over dedicated voice transmission lines.

PBX actually is PABX or Private Automatic Branch Exchange. It is private because the enterprise owns it, not the telephony company. Nowadays, PBX equipment is digital. PBX is less expensive to use than separate phone line in an enterprise. PBX provide a place for trunk or multiple phone. A pbx provides features and capabilities not available with direct connections to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). There's a lot of PBX features like interactive voice response (IVR), access control, music on hold, call waiting, caller id, call transfer and many more.

Later on, i will share with you on how to setup Asterisk server in your own pc. You can use this server to make a call, receive a call, make alarm wakeup call and many more.

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