[Asterisk-Users] Performance: Xeon or Opteron?

[Rich Adamson]

>> Yep, there is a lot of chatter about how hardware "x" performs with 
>> Asterisk and while I/O is the primary mover, most designs today will 
>> handle the modest Asterisk install easily.   I've got a site where 
>> they use 6 lines and 15 users on a 500Mhz CPU w/512MB RAM and boot off 
>> a 2GB flash disk.
>>
>> VERY modest and absolutely dominates that particular install.
>>
>> Only in the larger installs will hardware be an issue, but even then 
>> it doesn't take much hardware (from a server perspective) to handle a 
>> LOT of Asterisk traffic.
>>
>> RandyW
>>
> The worst problem will be older hardware that doesn't play well with 
> Digium cards. The TDM400 is the one I have some experience with, and 
> even motherboards that are PCI 2.2 don't always see the TDM400
> The Sangoma A200 seems more forgiving.
> I have to wonder if the T1/E1 cards suffer  in a similar manner?

While talking with one of the sangoma folks very recently, he was rather 
emphatic the pci bus was designed to "share" interrupts. I was a little 
concerned as a test server had the wanpipe driver sharing an interrupt 
with libata and uhc1_hcd. His comment was "that's the way its suppose to 
work, sharing interrupts as needed". I've not had any recognizable 
issues with the A200D card at all, and faxing via a A200D fxs port to a 
A200D fxo (pstn) port functions 100% reliably.

What that would suggest is the TDM400 pci firmware (whether on card 
logic or whatever) is the source of at least part of the TDM400 shared 
interrupt issue. I don't have any digium T1/E1 cards laying around, but 
if memory serves correctly, the T1/E1 cards do not use the same pci 
controller chip. That would suggest the T1/E1 cards are less of an issue 
then with the TDM400 card.