I first discovered VoIP a few years back by advertisements from Vonage. Vonage at the time seemed like the next big thing and the prices were amazing. How ever I did not want to port my house phone number over to Vonage not knowing much about it. I have been working as a systems administrator at the time and did a good deal of work with Linux.

What draws many people to make the switch from their normal phone system to Asterisk? What are the benefits and the upsides of using Asterisk? Will it save you additional costs?