[Asterisk-Users] 5,000 concurrent calls system rollout question

[Damon Estep]

> >I guess I just assumed that that the connection to asterisk would
have
> >to be IP since it is absolutely impossible to connect ~208 T1s
directly
> >to a single asterisk server. You would have to use an external media
> >gateway. I am not aware of any 200x T1 or 8x T3 cards for asterisk :)
> 
> 
> Not necessarily.

Yes!
> 
> Granted that you will not be able to have have that many T1's on one
> system but if the load is spread across multiple "Asterisk Media
> converters" you should be able to do anything and scale your system
much
> better.
> 
> Lets consider for example the following scenario:
> 
> ------------------       ------------------
> |   * Media      |       |   * Media      |
> |    server      |       |    server      |
> |   2x TE406P    |       |   2x TE406P    |
> ------------------       ------------------
>                |            |
>              -------------------
>              |     Main *      |
>              |     server      |
>              |                 |
>              -------------------
>                |            |
> ------------------       ------------------
> |   * Media      |       |   * Media      |
> |    server      |       |    server      |
> |   2x TE406P    |       |   2x TE406P    |
> ------------------       ------------------
> 


The main sever is still connected via IP, correct?

Does not matter if you use * for media gateways or an APX8000 - the only
trunking options to get to the main box are IP based.

> 
> This will let you serve 192 channels per media server.
> Media servers will only need to convert PRI<->IP so a cheap DIY Dual
> Core Xeon MP with 4MB cache would be more then enough to
> process/compress 196 channels in/out of 2 TE406P's. Also media servers
> do not need much RAM, hard drives and can run from flash cards.
> My preference would be convert all the traffic coming out of media
> servers to G.729 and IAX2 trunk it to main server. IAX2 trunking will
> save you MANY interrupts and will improve your bandwidth utilisation
> between Media and Main servers.
> 
> With this setup you can run Media and Main servers on private gigabit
> network which would be more then enough to handle IAX2 trunked G.729
> traffic from media servers. Network redundancy can easily be achieved
> between Media and Main servers by adding NIC's to each and using many
> known techniques (bonding, routing, VRRP, etc, etc).
> 
> The Main Asterisk server can be setup with load balancing/failover.
> Media servers will need to be aware of this.
> 
> The good thing in the setup like this is that its easy to scale up
when
> needed, you're not exposed of loosing all of your T1's if one of media
> servers fail, you can easily add more T1's in your setup.
> 
> The Main server would need a quad gigabit card (intel is a good
choice)
> and since it would not be hampered by Zaptel traffic and it would not
> need to do any transcoding (except for odd voicemail usage, that could
> be send to another server) you could use 2xDual Core Xeons. A separate
> dual port (for redundancy) gigabit card would be used to serve SIP
> clients.
> 
> We're working with one of the ISP's on testing and perhaps
implementing
> this setup for them.
> 
> This setup is considerably cheaper then $1M proposed Cisco setup and
can
> be made as reliable as Cisco solution is.
> Please don't get me wrong, if I'd have $1M-$5M to spare would go for
> Cisco.
> But most of us don't have that much money and if we would, we would
> never be reading any messages on asterisk-users.
> 
> Asterisk can be made as reliable and scales as good if not better then
> any Cisco solution and the fraction of the cost.
> 
> Now imagine all of this with the new DS3000P in media servers!
> 
> All hail Asterisk! :)
>