Net Tech Term: Asterisk
 

(1) Also called a star, a punctuation mark denoted by a 5- or 6-pointed snowflake shape (*). In many operating systems and applications, the asterisk is used as a wildcard symbol to represent any string of characters.

(2) When capitalized as , an open source PBX daemon that runs on Linux. Asterisk is a complete PBX contained within software and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using comparatively inexpensive hardware. Asterisk supports a wide range of TDM protocols for the handling and transmission of voice over traditional telephony interfaces and also supports US and European standard signalling types used in standard business phone systems.

And some relevant links for people who actually want to apply this knowledge:

http://asterisk.org/
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterisk_PBX

Thanks for the links.

Do you do a lot with asterisk XmerClorDx?

I don't do alot but it's fun to play with. The only reason I don't do a lot is because I can't have a setup here where I reside, for financial and living reasons. I see your location is in Wisconsin, but we have a VoIP group in Southern Calif. I visit irvineunderground meets on occasion, but I'm mainly interested in their robot and voip groups.

http://ivu.irvineunderground.org/viewtopic.php?t=1706

I could hook people up with better links if anyone expresses interest in doing VoIP with asterisk, or just setting up asterisk boxes.

this brings me back to "the more you know, the more you know you don't know".