[Asterisk-Users] Scalable IVR

[Steven Critchfield]

On Fri, 2004-05-14 at 12:37, digvijay singh wrote:
> Hi,
> I am an asterisk newbie and looking around for information . I wish someone 
> could take their valuable time off to answer my query in detail.
> I wish to set up an IVR system that can allow user authentication and 
> therefter accept 2-3 inputs from users ..generate a key and transmit the 
> same in voice back to the user .
> The system will intially have small load but if  the whole package in future 
> may have huge loads .. from 1000 to 10000 simultaneous peak time callers 
> with 1 minute duration calls ( just to mention how scalable we would ideally 
> desire it to be )
> At present we would need a maximum of 10 simultaneous users peak load 
> capability.
> From what i know so far asterisk is the most cost effective and sound 
> option.
> Now to my question..
> 1-) What would be the hardware requirements in these different cases
> a-) for a single analog phone line for demo purposes intially to

Just about anything with a PCI bus, maybe even a P133 would cut this.

> b-) a peak time 10 simultaneous calls facility and later

10 simultaneous callers needs to switch up to either T1, PRI, or E1
depending on location, cost, and extra needed features.

> c-) going upto 10,000 simultaneous calls scalability

10,000/30(E1) is 333.33 circuits. At a max of 4 circuits a board you are
looking at 84 cards. With a max of 2 cards per machine, you are looking
at 42 machines. 

My guess(and a bit uneducated in your needs) is that you will not have
10,000 people calling at the same time. My guess is you might get 10,000
over the course of 1 hour which breaks down to a call initiation every
2.777 seconds, or 167 calls per minute. With this in mind, you only need
167*call duration + fudge factor number of lines. You quote of a 1
minute call time would make you need 167 lines plus some fudge of about
10 or so lines. 177 lines is only 6 E1 circuits or 8 PRI circuits. Both
of which could be handled by 2 TE4xxP cards on one or two machines.

For that kind of call load, your interaction application should be
written in C and made a module of asterisk to eliminate startup costs. 

> 2-) Where can i procure the hardware from

Digium, or one of the resellers listed on their site.

> I was thinking of taking  30 access channels of 64 Kbps and 1 signalling 
> channel of 64 Kbps (30B + D). for an ISDN compatible EPABX
> Kindly let me know of your opinion
> Thanks
> digvijay


-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>