[Asterisk-Users] Organization wide

[Tim Jackson]

My current asterisk box is a Quad Xeon 450 (2mb cache) IBM Netfinity
7000. About how many SIP extensions (normal usage) would this machine
handle? 

What about redundancy? How would I implement an auto-failover Asterisk
box at a remote location, or could I?

Thanks,
Tim

-----Original Message-----
From: mjr at ranney.com [mailto:mjr at ranney.com] 
Sent: Friday, September 10, 2004 5:40 PM
To: Tim Jackson
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Organization wide

"Tim Jackson" <tim at angelinacounty.net> writes:

> After our department went to using *, I've had several inquiries about
> doing VoIP for my entire organization (Small county). We have ~10
> locations with various links in between (Mostly p2p T1s, some Frame
> (1.544mbps commit), some ISDN, some VPN over 768kbit internet) Right
now
> we're using several NEC Electra Elite systems, and 2 Nortel Meridian
> systems. In one of the main locations we have 29 POTS lines going into
> the NEC system. At another location we have a single PRI, and at a lot
> of the other locations we have just analog phones. Cisco has
approached
> us about using all Cisco equipment, but their idea is going to be
> costly. Is it wise to use Asterisk on something this big? I am not a
> PBX/Voice guy, I just do IP up here right now. Any tips, pointers,
> design guides, or advice to give?

Cisco hardware and software is amazingly expensive.  You can save lots
of money by using asterisk, digium hardware, and possibly Cisco
phones.  I recently helped our ~200 person, 10 location company
migrate away from an entire Cisco solution to one using asterisk with
Cisco handsets.  Not only is it vastly cheaper, but it is a much
easier system to manage and maintain.  I highly recommend you look
further into an asterisk system.

The only thing that stands out that might not work so well is the 29
pots lines in a single location.  Ideally you could install a PRI in
this location, but if not you'll need some other less common hardware
to handle all those lines.

On the IP side, the calls don't actually use up that much bandwidth,
probably 30kbits/sec/call if you use ILBC.  The only thing you need to
do is make sure that all the RTP packets are delivered with a higher
priority.  Either custom queuing or bandwidth reservation or both will
make everyone's life better.
-- 
Matt Ranney - mjr at ranney.com