[Asterisk-Users] system reboot often?

[Steven Critchfield]

On Wed, 2004-08-25 at 05:44, Michael George wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 24, 2004 at 08:29:10PM -0500, Steven Critchfield wrote:
> > > If * doesn't like IRQ sharing, how can I scale up a machine with several Zap
> > > card?  Or is it okay to share IRQ's with other Digium cards?
> > 
> > It isn't advisable to have "many" Zap cards in a machine. If you are
> > adding analog cards, you quickly run out of PCI slots before you get
> > very far. If you are adding T1/E1 cards, you quickly get to a point
> > where it is too risky to have that many circuits on a single x86 PC. The
> > whole point of X86 PCs is that they are cheap enough to put several in
> > use when you need it instead of building one behemoth machine.
> 
> Well, we only want 3 TDM400s: 4 FXO and 8 FXS.  That will fit in nearly any
> desktop PC.  That's not the scale that should require multiple boxes.
> 
> But the question is where does the IRQ sharing instability creep in?  I would
> think that *someone* out there would have a * box with 2-4 Digium cards in it
> that might be willing to share their experience.

What you have to be aware of is that Digium Zapata cards do not have a
buffer on them to handle interupt misses. Zap cards generate an interupt
1000 times per second. 

At the point you are installing 12 ports, don't go with TDM cards. You
are at a point where you will have trouble with power and you don't have
an easy expansion plan. You would be better off with a T100P and an
appropriate channel bank. At that point you are ready for expansion .
-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>