[Asterisk-Users] Over 10,000 lines. Will asterisk manage?

[Raymond McKay]

> So, why not use SER to register all the SIP phones, as it doesn't handle 
> the
> media-streams, just keeps track of the phones and does the 'handshake'.
> SER is supposed to be able to handle over 50.000 calls at a time, so one 
> SER
> server would be enough.
> Then interface this with one (or more) Asterisk servers to connect to the
> local PSTN.
> But maybe I'm missing something fundamental, in which case I'm happy to 
> learn.

I'm guessing, and I'd can't say for sure without seeing the actual physical 
layout of all of this, that the final solution would probably be a 
combination of SER and Asterisk with Asterisk getting used for endpoint 
connections and SER as a routing solution.  There are really two virtual 
topologies that need to be considered to make such a judgment though. 
First, the actual network structure has to be finely analyzed.  You need to 
know where your bottlenecks exist, latency issues within the network, and 
other such factors that could cause network issues.  During the same time, 
its also probably a good idea to consider your potential network points of 
failure so you can plan on strategies should something go wrong.  Second, 
you need to look at the virtual telephone exchange you are creating to 
understand how and where traffic is going to flow.  In certain cases, you 
may want SIP devices talking to each other such as backend connections, but 
you really aren't going to want to have SIP endpoint devices doing this as 
1) Some countries may and probably will start implementing wiretap 
requirements that will force you to redesign your entire network. 2) 
Accounting and control of devices is much harder when your devices are 
talking P2P.  Just look at all the problems the RIAA has when trying to 
regulate P2P networks.

15,000 endpoints may sound like a lot, but realistically, never more than 
about 1/8 - 1/4 will be inuse at the same time depending on the environment. 
Realistically, I see this kind of size system being more of a network design 
issue than a VoIP one so the key is to make sure you have a good network 
engineer planning the network and knowing what that network is going to 
really get used for.


Raymond McKay
President
RAYNET Technologies LLC
http://www.raynettech.com
(860) 833-9720