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<DIV><SPAN class=487544723-23052005><FONT face=Arial size=2>We are wanting to
move off of our legacy inter-tel phoneswitch and move to VoIP and
asterisk. We are looking for a new PBX because the inter-tel switch is too
difficult to integrate our existing (and new) software into.
</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=487544723-23052005><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=487544723-23052005><FONT face=Arial size=2>We are a technical
support center. All our calls currently come in on toll free numbers via
T1's, and there are 3 of them. I want to use a media gateway to convert
the T1's into SIP VOIP (I want reliable hardware for the gateway), and use
asterisk as the PBX having all incoming and outgoing channels as SIP.
Almost all dialplans will be using Queues, and there will likely be no more than
10 queues, with (currently) about 80 incoming toll-free numbers. There are
approximatley 30 agents, but as of right now there are no more than 15 agents
logged in at a time. We need to be able to support 60-70 simultaneous
calls initially and we have to be able to do this reliably. We also need
to be able to scale into the 100's of simultanous calls
range.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=487544723-23052005><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=487544723-23052005><FONT face=Arial size=2>What would be the
best option, to have 2 powerful machines (dual powersupply, ) with one as a
hotswappable backup or have multiple machines with a sort of load balancer
setup? Having multiple machines could possibly cost less, but I'm not sure
how the queues and agents would be managed across multiple machines. I.e.
how would the agent 'login' to each asterisk machine so that the calls could be
handed to it, and how would the calls get handed to an available agent by 4
seperate asterisk machines? I've read through the wiki, but I'm not sure
how much overhead queues would put into the system. I want to have all the
codecs the same, so the asterisk machines doesn't do any transcoding, and have
all channels as SIP. There will be music on hold. Would a dual 2.8
ghz xeon in this config be able to handle 80 simultaneous incoming calls?
Would using the 711 codec make a difference in available processing
power?</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=487544723-23052005><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=487544723-23052005><FONT face=Arial size=2>I'm sorry if this
has been answered a million times already, I just didn't see many configs close
to what we're trying to do to compare to. Thanks for any input you may
have.</FONT></SPAN></DIV></BODY></HTML>