Hello, I'm trying to put together a low cost - low powers PBX appliance for several customers. I have purchased a couple of the soekris net4801 boards and have asterisk up and running on them fine but they just don't quite cut it in the processing power department. I've been able to get about 10 simultaneous SIP calls with simple ulaw (no encoding decoding). While this might be OK for a very small business or home I just don't think it leaves a lot of overhead to do anything else. I've had a look around and I think I have settled on one of the VIA EPIA fanless boards. Does anyone have any experience with these running asterisk as far as performance and reliability is concerned? Has anyone run asterisk with any compressed codecs on this setup? I am going to TRY to run the system from flash memory one way or another - I realize the hoops I might have to jump through to prevent a large number of read/write cycles but I'd really like to have the whole thing solid state... Maybe someone has a better idea regarding program storage? Also, I would really like to run this as a router/firewall appliance as well so that that the box can sit on a public IP if the client only has one. For this reason I kind of have my heart set on openbsd. The routing and firewall utilities on openbsd are very simple to configure and easy to use. Does anyone know what limitations asterisk might have on openbsd (besides lack of zaptel.. ) ? I have run asterisk 1.2.? on openbsd before and found it worked pretty well. Failing that I suppose I would settle for running the routing/firewalling on linux. I've just found the linux networking tools very awkward up until now - perhaps someone know of a linux distribution - or tool - that makes routing/firewall/NAT as painless as on openbsd? Maybe I just need to sit down for a day and learn the tool properly ;) Anyways, I know there are a lot of questions in here but perhaps someone has done one or all of these things? Thanks for any advice or warnings! Steve Glaus -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20070310/aeb2a5a5/attachment.htm
Here's how I do it. Buy complete fanless system flash card ready unit with four ethernet interfaces: http://www.ibt.ca/v2/items/fwa7204/index.html It is very small, in an aluminium extrusion case, very robust. Install Astlinux on 128 MB flash card - http://www.asterisk.org/ Voila! - flash based firewall/asterisk machine capable of running 20+ extension office. I have several installations like this. -- Chris Mason (264) 497-5670 Fax: (264) 497-8463 Int: (305) 704-7249 Fax: (815)301-9759 UK 44.207.183.0271 Cell: 264-235-5670 Yahoo IM: netconcepts_anguilla@yahoo.com -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
On Sat, 10 Mar 2007, Mail Lists wrote:> I've had a look around and I think I have settled on one of the VIA EPIA > fanless boards. Does anyone have any experience with these running asterisk > as far as performance and reliability is concerned? Has anyone run asterisk > with any compressed codecs on this setup?I've built several systems based on this motherboard (the 1GHz fanless one) Compressed codecs are fine - as long as you aren't transcoding ;-) I figured I could push 30 non transcoded calls through one, but I've never had the ability to fully test it out. The max. I had going on one system was 20 calls. 5 calls to music on hold (where it's transcoding from the GSM moh file to G711 is causing my R&D box (wich has a 533MHz VIA processor with 64Kb cache) is using between 5 and 12% CPU. I'd expect one of my 1Ghz boxes to hardly notice this at all. Make sure you compile asterisk in i586 mode - it's in the Makefile in 1.2.x. It'll crash otherwise as the VIA processors are lacking some vital MMX instructions.> I am going to TRY to run the system from flash memory one way or another - I > realize the hoops I might have to jump through to prevent a large number of > read/write cycles but I'd really like to have the whole thing solid state... > Maybe someone has a better idea regarding program storage?Boot it off flash and have it load an initrd.gz into RAM. Everything will run entirely from RAM - no writes to the flash at all! I can get everything inside a 48MB flash drive, but I use 64MB ones which gives me space to store configs, etc.. (of-course, I make it sound so simple ;-) but I'd already worked this out some years back for a diskless router project) I do have a partition on the flash that does get written - rarely. It holds a copy of the astdb file and some other local configuration things - like sip/iax accounts, etc. I have a cron job that sees it the astdb file has been touched and if so, I dump it to flash. There is a couple of minutes window of failure here though, so a user could do the star code to set his phone on divert, then system get power cycled, and that setting might be lost... I can live with that. I keep voicemail on a 2nd flash IDE device mounted as ext2 (not 3 as ext3 writes regularly!) and force the fsck at boot time if it's dirty - I'd rather lose all voicemail than have it dump itself into single user mode waiting for keyboard input... (your thoughts here might be different :) $ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/ram0 124M 67M 58M 54% / tmpfs 125M 0 125M 0% /dev/shm /dev/hdc2 60M 894K 59M 2% /data This box has 256MB of RAM. Asterisk 1.2.16, zaptel 1.2.15. It's running apache+php, sendmail, and asterisk. There is no perl interpreter, as I've currently no need for it. (and it's about 10MB unless I squeeze stuff out of it!)> Also, I would really like to run this as a router/firewall appliance as well > so that that the box can sit on a public IP if the client only has one. For > this reason I kind of have my heart set on openbsd. The routing and firewall > utilities on openbsd are very simple to configure and easy to use. Does > anyone know what limitations asterisk might have on openbsd (besides lack of > zaptel.. ) ? I have run asterisk 1.2.? on openbsd before and found it worked > pretty well.I run similar motherboards as routers, booting off flash too. Also running Linux, but then I find the Linux firewall an easy thing to work with for most simple cases. Watch your interrupts - especially if you're plugging in a 2nd Ethernet card and a TDM card. The VIA motherboard which has 2 Ethernet ports has a processor with only 64MB of cache ram. The ones I'm using have 128KB cache.> Failing that I suppose I would settle for running the routing/firewalling on > linux. I've just found the linux networking tools very awkward up until now > - perhaps someone know of a linux distribution - or tool - that makes > routing/firewall/NAT as painless as on openbsd? Maybe I just need to sit > down for a day and learn the tool properly ;)Drop me an email and I'll send you a simple shell script to setup a basic firewall, do nat, etc. I'd probably not recomend running the router/firewall on the same box as asterisk though... Gordon
Hi there, I've got a few systems like the one you describe running painlessly for several customers. On Saturday 10 March 2007 19:10, Mail Lists wrote:> I'm trying to put together a low cost - low powers PBX appliance for > several customers. I have purchased a couple of the soekris net4801 boards > and have asterisk up and running on them fine but they just don't quite cut > it in the processing power department. I've been able to get about 10 > simultaneous SIP calls with simple ulaw (no encoding decoding). While this > might be OK for a very small business or home I just don't think it leaves > a lot of overhead to do anything else.I found out the same thing and settled for Mini-ITX as well. Perhaps the new Soekris net5501 that is about to be released will help you?> I am going to TRY to run the system from flash memory one way or another - > I realize the hoops I might have to jump through to prevent a large number > of read/write cycles but I'd really like to have the whole thing solid > state... Maybe someone has a better idea regarding program storage?I've been running off CD and Compact Flash without any problems. I've created a custom LiveCD so it's more or less hardware independant. It copies itself into RAM once it boots. Though it can easily be used with CF only.> > Failing that I suppose I would settle for running the routing/firewalling > on linux. I've just found the linux networking tools very awkward up until > now - perhaps someone know of a linux distribution - or tool - that makes > routing/firewall/NAT as painless as on openbsd? Maybe I just need to sit > down for a day and learn the tool properly ;)I've got Shorewall and firehol on my CD as well as cbqinit and htbinit. Though I don't actually use them currently. -- Sune Kloppenborg Jeppesen (Jaervosz) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20070311/bbb2faa1/attachment.pgp
On Sunday 11 March 2007 13:22, Chris Mason (Lists) wrote:> > I get the version with a 1GHz CPU.Next time I might be better off to actually read the page properly before posting :-) Anyways thanks for the pointer, these boards definately seems interesting. -- Sune Kloppenborg Jeppesen (Jaervosz)
Hi , We have done exactly that . fan less , VIA processor , flash card , firewall. http://www.allo.com/products/micropbx.php We sell wholesale. Ioan at allo.com _____ From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Mail Lists Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2007 11:41 PM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: [asterisk-users] asterisk on mini-itx Hello, I'm trying to put together a low cost - low powers PBX appliance for several customers. I have purchased a couple of the soekris net4801 boards and have asterisk up and running on them fine but they just don't quite cut it in the processing power department. I've been able to get about 10 simultaneous SIP calls with simple ulaw (no encoding decoding). While this might be OK for a very small business or home I just don't think it leaves a lot of overhead to do anything else. I've had a look around and I think I have settled on one of the VIA EPIA fanless boards. Does anyone have any experience with these running asterisk as far as performance and reliability is concerned? Has anyone run asterisk with any compressed codecs on this setup? I am going to TRY to run the system from flash memory one way or another - I realize the hoops I might have to jump through to prevent a large number of read/write cycles but I'd really like to have the whole thing solid state... Maybe someone has a better idea regarding program storage? Also, I would really like to run this as a router/firewall appliance as well so that that the box can sit on a public IP if the client only has one. For this reason I kind of have my heart set on openbsd. The routing and firewall utilities on openbsd are very simple to configure and easy to use. Does anyone know what limitations asterisk might have on openbsd (besides lack of zaptel.. ) ? I have run asterisk 1.2.? on openbsd before and found it worked pretty well. Failing that I suppose I would settle for running the routing/firewalling on linux. I've just found the linux networking tools very awkward up until now - perhaps someone know of a linux distribution - or tool - that makes routing/firewall/NAT as painless as on openbsd? Maybe I just need to sit down for a day and learn the tool properly ;) Anyways, I know there are a lot of questions in here but perhaps someone has done one or all of these things? Thanks for any advice or warnings! Steve Glaus -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20070311/cbcf19f2/attachment.htm