Asterisk

Asterisk is to communications applications what the Apache web server is to web applications. Apache is a web server. Asterisk is a communication server. Apache handles all the low-level details of sending and receiving data using the HTTP protocol. Asterisk handles all the low level details of sending and receiving data using lots of different communication protocols. When you install Apache, you have a web server but its up to you to create the web applications. When you install Asterisk, you have a communications server but its up to you to create the communications applications.