[asterisk-users] Load Balance Trunks

[Steve Edwards]

On Fri, 1 Jul 2011, Abid Saleem wrote:

> The intention is to load balance between 100 or even more trunks. 
> Filling up one trunk may have another problem because we have another 
> restriction on 5 simultaneous calls per trunk. Yes unused capacity can 
> be rolled over to the next day. Anything is fine that does not break 
> these two restrictions of 120 mins/day/trunk and 5 simultaneous 
> calls/trunk.

> Please help me in writing an AGI script or whatever required if you can 
> as I am not a programmer.

If you don't consider yourself a 'programmer' then you don't have the 
skills to start. You should hire a competent programmer. It will be much 
cheaper in the long run and you can focus on what you are good at instead 
of what you are not.

It's not that the requirements are all that challenging, it's just that 
the probability of success when you lack the skills is small.

These skills include, but are not limited to:

1) An understanding of Asterisk, dialplan logic, and applications.

2) An understanding of the AGI interface including reading and setting 
channel variables.

3) MySQL programming and administration skills.

4) The ability and experience to write well thought out, clearly 
presented, robust and maintainable code.

What service are you offering?

Are the calls delivered by SIP or PSTN?

Is this a 24x7 operation?

If I was asked to design a 500 simultaneous call system with SIP delivery 
I would probably start with 2 OpenSIPS servers, 2 Asterisk instances 
(possibly on the same servers as the OpenSIPS servers), and at least 1 
MySQL server.

You could cram everything on to a single system, I just don't like to put 
all my eggs in a single basket.

I like 'front-ending' Asterisk servers with OpenSIPS because it gives me 
the flexibility to handle a host failure or take a host out of production 
for maintenance.

AJS (previous poster) has the right approach -- 2 AGIs. One AGI to 
determine which trunk to use (I would use a 'select' to determine which 
trunk instead of 'random') and one executed at the end of the call to 
update the database.

-- 
Thanks in advance,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Edwards       sedwards at sedwards.com      Voice: +1-760-468-3867 PST
Newline                                              Fax: +1-760-731-3000