[asterisk-dev] zaptel timer for sip to iax proxy

[Tim Panton]

On 10 Nov 2008, at 04:56, Mark Spowage wrote:

> if just ONE sip phone is proxied , will IAX get choppy without a  
> zaptel timer ?
>
> tests here at times are ok and other times often choppy
>
> a zaptel timer seems to be required for trunking, but why bother for
> just a few channels, a major effort
> to get zaptel and a timer integrated,as well as more memory for an
> embedded machine short on memory.
>
> now if trunking is not used, then why would iax be choppy for serving
> as a sip proxy or bridge between sip phones ?
>
> a zaptel timer is on the main iax server side, but NOT on the  
> embedded side
>
> gtalk never sounds choppy , so what is iax all chopped out about ?
>
> ast 1.6 & 1.4 both sound ok at times and choppy at times as well
>
> currently 1.6 is on the embedded side and 1.4 on the server.. perhaps
> they both need to be the same version
>
> is this some kind of iax circus ? :)  help ! sinking in the iax  
> choppy sea
>
> playing musiconhold from either side can come in chopped as well,
> where as gtalk is always smooth..
> grief !
>

Mark, I think we need some more context to help answer properly.
In the meanwhile here is my understanding of the situation....

chan_iax (and most of asterisk) is externally clocked, i.e. if it is  
bridging a pair of
channels then receiving an inbound voice frame will cause a voice  
frame to
be sent out of the other end of the bridge. This works pretty well in  
cases where
the incoming audio is being sampled (and sent) at a constant rate.

There are a number of places where this won't work - e.g. meetme, where
there isn't a single channel to use as a clock (each channel will  
drift slightly
wrt the others), in this case Asterisk derives timing from the kernel,  
either
via a real telephony device (e.g. a PRI card) or from a kernel resource
(timers etc) via zap_dummy.

IAX trunking is another of these examples - audio from several channels
need to be put into a single packet, so asterisk uses the kernel timer
to decide when to send a packet. (Note this is _not_ the same as
just using IAX to connect to a ITSP, IAX trunking tries to save on  
headers
by multiplexing several calls into a single packet).

I'm guessing what you are seeing is the difference in timing in the  
softphone
you are using - The IAX one is probably not using the local audio  
hardware to
generate the timing, whereas the Gtalk one is.

Might that make sense ?

If not, give us some more clues ;-)

T.