[asterisk-users] Small PC to build and run Asterisk

[Gordon Henderson]

On Mon, 14 Jun 2010, Chris Bagnall wrote:

> Actually, the Atom seems to be surprisingly powerful. We have a couple of
> Atom boxes with transcoding and conferences enabled without issue. I
> wouldn't pretend it'll cope with hundreds of conference participants, but
> with ~10 or so it seems to be fine.

I'll second the Atoms - I have several in the data centre handling VoIP, 
virtual PBXs, etc. And you can now get fanless motherboards. Bliss.

Even using a few as general purpose LAMP servers too - the data centre I 
use doesn't charge per amp, but it's coming, and already there in most big 
places - in the UK, anyway - it seems Amps cost more than Gb)

> Likewise with transcoding - we've only really tested up to ~30 channels with
> G.711 to GSM, not any of the "heavier CPU workload" translations (e.g. iLBC
> or G.729).
>
> For a small to medium office (e.g. 30 extensions, 10 concurrent calls) it
> works fine, even with a little conferencing and transcoding.

I do that with a 500MHz AMD Geode ... (no transcoding though - benchmarked 
it to 85 concurrent calls, handling the media streams - limit these boxes 
to 60 extensions though)

Gordon