[Asterisk-Users] Dinosaur *

[Scott Lambert]

On Mon, Jun 02, 2003 at 04:46:51PM -0400, Mike M wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> With some trepidation I've come to inquire about platform requirements
> for * after having spent a couple of hours searching and browsing
> the archives and skimming the Handbook (very nice). I've found
> recommendations for 800-1000 Mhz and 128-256 MB RAM machines. My
> curiosity is not about what machine I need to start using * to support
> live comm ops.  Rather, I want to know if a couple of dinosaurs that I
> have in the corner can be used to do some learning.
>
> I have a Pentium 133Mhz 16MB RAM box with PCI bus, and a Pentium 75Mhz
> 32MB RAM box with PCI bus.  Will these boxes work for back-to-back
> experimentation with PRI in this configuration?:

It seems to me that the Digium cards are DSPless.  That means the
host CPU has to act as the DSP for all these lines.  I'm thinking a
low end Pentium *might* be able to handle one FXS and one FXO port
simultaneously.  I wouldn't try running a PRI card in one.  Without
compression you might be able to IAX the traffic onto a LAN connected to
a WAN of some type.

My 500Mhz celeron doesn't like to compile and take calls at the same
time.

DSPless hardware is cheap but you have to have a serious host CPU to
make up for it.

> POTS phone-----[ * ]---PRI---[ * ]---POTS phone
>
> I assume that I'll need to get a couple line cards and a couple T1
> cards.

a couple of FXS cards and a couple of routers to handle a data T1/PRI.

-- 
Scott Lambert                    KC5MLE                       Unix SysAdmin
lambert at lambertfam.org