asterisk users - Jan 2004 - asterisk with big number of extentions.

We are thinking of making network of about 25000 extension numbers.
These extension will be SIP phones. Asterisk will be connected to some VoIP 
gateways through H323 which will allow to
terminate calls.

Can Asterisk handle such kind of load?
Can it be done on one server?
What kind of server do we need for making it work?

Dmitry

> We are thinking of making network of about 25000 extension numbers.
> These extension will be SIP phones. Asterisk will be connected to some VoIP
> gateways through H323 which will allow to
> terminate calls.
> 
> Can Asterisk handle such kind of load?
No problem, as long as none of them make any calls. What you really wanted
to ask is, how many simultanous calls can a single * box handle, and that is 
a function of exactly "how" you configure/engineer it:
  1) sip phones that have canreinvite=yes use * for call setup only
  2) sip phones that have canreinvite=no force the rtp traffic through *
     consuming a greater amount of processing resources
  3) sip phones that are configured with different encoding (codec) schemes
     are forced through some translations somewhere. Is that * in your case?
     If so, see #2.
  4) some sip phones (or adapters) don't handle sip invites very well, and
     must pass all rtp traffic through *. If you use those, see #2.
  5) some sip phones lurking behind NAT boxes require all rtp traffic to
     pass through *. See #2.
> Can it be done on one server?
Probably not given the answer above.
> What kind of server do we need for making it work?
High reliability, fast processor, disk speed less important, high throughput
ethernet, and a good consultant or two to help. ;) See the wiki pages.

To properly engineer "any" pbx, you will have to start with some
reasonable
call/traffic statistics, and engineer around those numbers. Asterisk is no
different.

Rich