[asterisk-dev] HW requirements for a big conference server

[Russell Bryant]

Geoffrey Mina wrote:
> I think you are not going to get MeetMe to work reliably with 200
> concurrent users.  There are some elements of the MeetMe architecture
> which don't allow it to scale very well.  Conference (app_conference)
> could probably handle 200 users on your current hardware.  It doesn't
> have all the bells and whistles of MeetMe, but it does the core job of
> conferencing lots of users very well.

I have never personally tested a conference that big, so I can't speak 
directly to the original question.  However, this post doesn't really 
make sense to me.

The original poster is wanting to conference _all_ TDM channels.  MeetMe 
works by conferencing in DAHDI.  This means that the audio doesn't come 
up to Asterisk at all in this scenario.  Why would app_conference, which 
mixes inside of Asterisk, and would require 200 calls worth of audio to 
be passed up to Asterisk to do it, scale much better that leaving the 
conference down in DAHDI?  If app_conference does raw mixing that much 
more efficient than we do it in DAHDI, it would be nice to know so that 
we can improve it.

-- 
Russell Bryant
Digium, Inc. | Engineering Manager, Open Source Software
445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA
Check us out at: www.digium.com & www.asterisk.org