[Keefe]

(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.