[Asterisk-Users] Operating environment for *

[Scott Stingel]

Answering question number 5 only:

My customer's system is an extremely busy IVR, used in a game-show call-in
environment, with short calls and high peak call rates.  The maximum number
of ports so far that my system can handle, with a single fast P4 processor,
is 4 E1 spans (one E400P).  Even at this size of 120 channels, I experience
some dropped calls and channel lock-outs (which recover every few minutes).
However, there are three pieces of good news that should improve the
situation:

(1) There apparently is a bug is how the code buffers the frames on the E1
ports - an overflow causes many re-tries and possibly lost calls (in my
experience).  Mark and Martin at Digium are aware of the problem, and are
currently looking into it.  I will let you know what they find.

(2) I've had good luck so far using a dual-Xeon processor board and Redhat's
Fedora Linux.  I have an IVR load-tester and the results are very
encouraging.  In a couple weeks I'll have results from the field.

(3) Digium's TE410P has the ability to be a bus-master.  This produces some
minor performance gains in my tests.

When all three of these things are incorporated into an environment, I think
you could probably expect that the dual-Xeon setup could handle as many as 8
or more E1 spans in a heavy load IVR environment.  

Please let me know if you need my load tester script, as I'm happy to share
it.

Good luck!
Scott

Scott M. Stingel 
Emerging Voice Technology Inc.

Email:          scott at evtmedia.com <mailto:scott at evtmedia.com>   
URL:            www.evtmedia.com <http://www.evtmedia.com>   



> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com 
> [mailto:asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Ahmad Faiz
> Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 9:29 PM
> To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
> Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Operating environment for *
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I've got some questions to post in regard to running asterisk in a
> production-grade environment, specifically targeting high-density IVR
> applications. No VoIP involved, just straight PSTN -> * and 
> perhaps the
> occasional outdials or agent-based predictive dialing.
> 
> 1) Which user would you run * under?
> 2) What other security-related issues do you have to resolve?
> 3) How do you handle crashes (murphy -will- visit you some day)?
> 4) What are the best redundancy techniques to use?
> 5) With respect to Digium's E1 card, what's the max # of 
> boards you've been
> able to install in a single box and still have * work well?
> 
> Thanks in advance. Perhaps someone could start a site where users can
> contribute war stories of their * deployment -- that would 
> make for good
> reading!
> 
> Cheers,
> Faiz
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> Asterisk-Users at lists.digium.com
> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> 
>