Asterisk is a complete IP PBX in software. It runs on a wide variety of operating systems including Linux, Mac OS X, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Sun Solaris and provides all of the features you would expect from a PBX including many advanced features that are often associated with high end (and high cost) proprietary PBXs. Asterisk supports Voice over IP in many protocols, and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware. Asterisk is released as open source under the GNU General Public License (GPL), meaning that it is available for download free of charge. If you want a information about the same then you can visit http://www.asterisk.org. For more information & glossary visit http://www.voip-info.org/wiki Have a nice day. Thanks & Regards, Neil