[Asterisk-Users] mpg123 or asterisk

[Matt Roth]

Steve Totaro wrote:

> Please let us know your results.  I cannot really test this in 
> production system since it is a $16,000/hr call center.  I was using 
> madplay but it was crashing and creating zombie processes, I figured 
> native was not the way to go since all of the different audio 
> streams.  Mpg123 works perfectly for me under a load of sixty 
> channels, I can confirm that for sure.
>
> Thanks,
> Steve

Steve,

mpg123 has the same problem with zombie processes as you were 
experiencing with MadPlay.  For a scalable system, native MOH is the way 
to go.  As per Kevin Fleming, it only introduces a slight memory 
overhead.  mpg123 consumes CPU cycles to decompress the mp3s and in my 
experience, a large scale Asterisk system is much hungrier for CPU 
cycles than memory.

The different audio streams used by native MOH are not really a problem 
for the following reasons:

 1) The native MOH files are likely to be cached, so they are probably 
being read from memory.
 2) The native MOH files do not require decompression or transcoding.
 3) The MOH is handled in the same thread as the call itself, so there 
is very little CPU overhead.

As always, I believe that the information I'm sharing is accurate but 
welcome any corrections or additions.

Thank you,

Matthew Roth
InterMedia Marketing Solutions
Software Engineer and Systems Developer