[Asterisk-Users] Call Center software opensource or commercial

[Rich Adamson]

> > im my case im looking into 100 seats initially and going up to 1000 at
> > the end (over a 18 months period).
> > Looks like we will have to develop *a lot* if we want to use * for it.
> > Maybe a commercial solution will be better at this time.
> 
> On Cebit SGI announced a server solution based on Signate software
> (which is based on Asterisk) that can handle up to 5000 simultaneous
> calls. I don't know how the marketing drones have cooked up that number
> but perhaps it's interesting. See 
> http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2005/march/von.html

According to the marketing blurb, "The benchmark was a standard SIPP test 
and was performed by SGI and Signate. The results compared similarly 
configured systems: an Altix 350 with dual Intel® 1.5GHz Itanium 2 
processors/400MHz front side bus/2GB memory compared to a dual 3.0GHz 
Pentium 4 processors/800MHz front side bus/2GB memory. The results 
based on simultaneous calls terminating with comparable voice quality
were 5,002 for the Altix 350 versus 333 for the PC."

Its interesting how marketing people leave out the details. The 
statement only addresses terminating calls (which one is left with the
assumption the test only addressed call setup, not teardown, cdr, etc), 
doesn't mention whether any of those calls could actually carry on a 
conversation, hints that no other application (eg, voicemail) was
in use simultanously, and most likely assumes the equivalent of 
canreinvite=yes on a local lan segment following call setup.

However, the stats do seem to support what many of us have already 
experienced, and that is the pci bus limitations with some Intel 
chipsets is far less then reasonable for realtime apps (such as *).

It would be very interesting to see some real life stats with a 
reasonable mix of * apps including voicemail, transcoding, T1s, etc.

"If" the box could actually sustain 5,000 real life simultanous calls,
it could replace a hugh percentage of the US class-5 Central Offices
(not to mention PBXs). ;)