(The beginning of learning asterisk..The future of telephony..Asterisk is an open source software VoIPPBX system, which is a pure software implementation running in a Linux environment. Asterisk is a very full-featured utility that provides a lot of telecommunications functions, and can turn your x86 machine into your own switch, as well as an enterprise-class commercial switch. The exciting thing about Asterisk is that it provides the functionality and scalability of a commercial switch at a small business budget. You can use an old-fashioned Pentium 3 computer and make your organization look like the big business in the world.)