[asterisk-users] Laying out things correctly

[Chris Bagnall]

> We have two PRI lines each with a huge span of numbers. We'd like to make use
> of these lines/numbers for voice. In a typical setup, what would be the perfect
> way to use this.

You need to tell us for what purpose you're using these numbers? Are you selling them out to the general public? Are you using them in-house? If you're selling access to them, are you selling predominantly to individuals (i.e. single SIP devices) or to business (generally multiple devices, but often behind one endpoint)?

2 PRI lines is only 60 channels, which on a decent, modern specification of server won't be a problem on a single box. You may of course want to run the PRIs into two boxes for redundancy (one box failing won't take out all the numbers) - but this might depend on whether your PRI provider will automatically route calls into PRI2 if PRI1 dies, or whether the 2 PRIs have independent number ranges on them.

> - Would one have a dedicated box that has the PRI cards configured running
> Asterisk and it's only function is to handle the lines
>    - All other machines trunking through to the PRI box for outgoing/incoming
> calls as required
> - A separate machine that handles the central billing for all incoming/outgoing
> calls as per the required solution?

It's up to you - all of these will work. Assuming you have no plans to grow beyond the 2 PRIs, then a single box would cope with the load (though, as suggested above, a hot spare is never a bad idea).

If your long-term plans are for many more PRIs coming into a cluster of servers, probably better to plan well now with future growth in mind. That might look something like this:

2 x OpenSER boxes handling registrations - initially hot-spare config, in time as load increases you might move to load balanced
2-n x Asterisk boxes with PRIs - you'll want to look around the net at some of the performance tests with different versions of asterisk - theoretically with 1.4 you should be able to push 4 PRIs through each server, if the server's not doing much else apart from receiving calls on the PRI and firing them out via SIP.
2-n x Asterisk boxes for "extra services" - voicemail, complex dialplan scripting, etc. etc.

If you're primarily linking via SIP/IAX to businesses' PBXs at their local site (i.e. fewer clients, but each with more numbers/concurrent calls), you may not need the SER boxes at this stage - they're mainly to take registration load away from Asterisk.

Regards,

Chris
-- 
C.M. Bagnall, Director, Minotaur I.T. Limited
For full contact details visit http://www.minotaur.it
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