asterisk users - Oct 2004 - Asterisk on PowerPC v. Intel/AMD

With today's apple release of faster/cheaper hardware(PowerPC 1.8GHz for
$1499) and the bragging I've heard by several Mac Hardware Asterisk users
about how it's SO much better on PowerPC than on Intel/AMD. 

I was wondering if anyone has any side-by-side comparisons of capacity on
Mac hardware vs. Intel/AMD hardware, doesn't have to be anything official,
just some people with real-world asterisk on PPC experience. I'm interested
in number of Sip -> Zap concurrent conversations as well as just how many
pure Zap channels you can have running concurrently on the Mac hardware
platform(One user bragged of three quad T1 digium cards all being in use at
once[over 200 Zap channels]).

Are these claims true?

Is Asterisk easier to install on YellowDog or is another distro better on
PPC Hardware?

How much does clock speed of the PPC matter from 1.8GHz-single to
2.5GHz-dual in terms of capacity?

Any other catches when running Asterisk on PPC?

Yes, I have read the Wiki on this subject:
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+MacOSX+Support
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+Linux+Yellow+Dog

Thanks,

MATT---

In the UK I have successfully cross-linked an Asterisk box (w/Digium E1 card) to
the office PBX (Small Siemens).  Works great in both directions!

But...

When calling FROM asterisk TO the PBX, the caller hears -no ringing-, just 
silence.  Users have been interpreting the silence (can be 20 seconds before the
Siemens voicemail kicks in for a No Answer situation) as a dead line.

I have tried faking the ringing with various Asterisk methods, and have had
no useful result.

I'm sure users on this list have encountered and overcome this problem.

Thanks!
JG Black  Seattle Washington

exten => s,1,Dial(blah,r)

http://voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+cmd+Dial

I can't say that I have yet had extensive experience with it yet, but
what I have seen is promising. I, like you had read the posts
promising wonderful bliss, not dealing with echo issues and interrupts
 I was running Asterisk on PowerPC.

So, I bought an old Powermac 8500 on eBay, for $20, to try it for
myself. I'll have to say, I was pleasantly surprised with the result.
I got Yellow Dog Linux loaded on it, got Asterisk loaded up, the
zaptel hardware works great, and there was no echo, period. It really
was amazing. There are only a few combinations we've found that
produce no echo on Intel hardware. I don't know if these results say
that there won't be a problem with other PPC hardware, but it is very
promising. This was only a 180 mHz machine, and it performed
beatifully, transcoding GSM to ULAW and iLBC to ULAW, on two channels
concurrently. (I didn't have any more channels to test with at the
time, but I believe it would handle more).

I can see a few disadvantages, however. Apple hardware can be a little
more expensive. I realize it is more powerful than its Intel
counterparts, but in many situations, you don't need the extra power
that the money buys you. There also is no g729 binary for PowerPC, so
it won't do 729 either, which may or may not be a big deal.

Brian


On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 13:50:28 -0400, mattf <mattf@vicimarketing.com>
wrote:
> With today's apple release of faster/cheaper hardware(PowerPC 1.8GHz
for
> $1499) and the bragging I've heard by several Mac Hardware Asterisk
users
> about how it's SO much better on PowerPC than on Intel/AMD.
> 
> I was wondering if anyone has any side-by-side comparisons of capacity on
> Mac hardware vs. Intel/AMD hardware, doesn't have to be anything
official,
> just some people with real-world asterisk on PPC experience. I'm
interested
> in number of Sip -> Zap concurrent conversations as well as just how
many
> pure Zap channels you can have running concurrently on the Mac hardware
> platform(One user bragged of three quad T1 digium cards all being in use at
> once[over 200 Zap channels]).
> 
> Are these claims true?
> 
> Is Asterisk easier to install on YellowDog or is another distro better on
> PPC Hardware?
> 
> How much does clock speed of the PPC matter from 1.8GHz-single to
> 2.5GHz-dual in terms of capacity?
> 
> Any other catches when running Asterisk on PPC?
> 
> Yes, I have read the Wiki on this subject:
> http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+MacOSX+Support
> http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+Linux+Yellow+Dog
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> MATT---
> _______________________________________________
> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>

Thanks!
I of course had tried that a long time ago, but it did not work immediately.

The proper syntax is
exten => s,1,Dial(blah,55,r)

where 55 is my timeout value, in seconds.

However, thanks very much, it works now, your mail prodded me to go at this 
again.


On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Michael Loftis wrote:
> exten => s,1,Dial(blah,r)
>
> http://voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+cmd+Dial

> I was wondering if anyone has any side-by-side comparisons of capacity on
> Mac hardware vs. Intel/AMD hardware, doesn't have to be anything
official,
> just some people with real-world asterisk on PPC experience.
I have run a bunch of SIP streams straight through (reinvite=no) a
PIII 500MHz based IBM on to a 604 (pre-G3) 120 MHz PowerMac 9500
further on to a third, bigger box hosting a conference to accummulate
all the calls. I wanted to see which machine would max out first, but
I couldn't saturate them. However, the PIII's loadavg was going up
much steeper than that of the Mac. The IBM even had twice the memory
(256 MB vs 128 MB).

I have run ten ILBC to G711 transcoding calls over IAX on my Powerbook
G4 while executing heavy Photoshop filters and moving the Photoshop
editing window over the screen like a madman without any artifacts on
the sound of the calls. I have even repeated the whole experiment
running MacOSX inside MoL under Yellow Dog Linux with two instances of
Asterisk, one under YDL another under OSX -- Still no sound artifacts.

The only thing that creates sound artifacts is starting/quitting
X-lite. Nothing else will. Also, when you run X-Lite on  the Powerbook
and let it connect to Asterisk also running on the same machine, then
call the demo, it won't be able to properly play back the recording
coming from Asterisk. X-Lite is probably the worst resource hog I have
ever seen. I think that running a recursive Lisp function to calculate
the factorial of 100.000 on a 1980s VAXcluster wasn't as much of a
resource hog as X-lite although I can tell you that my buddy and I
almost got expelled from the curriculum when we did this.

On subjective sound quality tests any Mac based Asterisk box I have
come across sounded noticeably better than x86 based ones twice or
three times the clock rate and most of the users have confirmed this.

Nicolas Gudino in Argentina has replaced a 1.9GHz Athlon box with a
300 MHz PowerMac 9600 running five Zaptel cards and he says everything
works much better now.

> in number of Sip -> Zap concurrent conversations as well as just how
many
> pure Zap channels you can have running concurrently on the Mac hardware
The trouble with that is that I haven't got the Zaptel hardware nor
the PSTN environment to test that many channels, but if you are
seriously interested in some load benchmarks, I would like to suggest
to contact TerraSoft Solutions, the sponsors of YDL, who also
sponsored the original work to get Asterisk and Zaptel to work on
LinuxPPC. They are the Mac Linux guys who sell Macs with YDL
pre-installed and they should have a vital interest to show how well
their PPC Linux boxes stack up against x86 boxes. They also have the
finest and latest Mac hardware to test on. The guy in charge there is
Kai Staats. http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com
> Is Asterisk easier to install on YellowDog or is another distro better on
> PPC Hardware?
YDL is basically Red Hat for PPC with the red hat logo replaced by a
yellow dog logo. If you are familiar with Red Hat you will feel at
home on YDL. I personally don't fancy RHL that much but as of YDL
3.0.1 Asterisk and Zaptel build out of the box and YDL is the most
common LinuxPPC distro. You won't get anybody saying "You're
running
this on what?" when you ask for assistance ;-) In other words, YDL is
a pretty safe choice when all you want to do is run Asterisk.
> How much does clock speed of the PPC matter from 1.8GHz-single to
> 2.5GHz-dual in terms of capacity?
In my experience using Macs since about 1994 with BSD, clock rates
don't seem to matter a lot. Then again, I am not a graphic designer
editing 500 MB poster sized high resolution fotos or video content or
Maya or what other fancy stuff there may be. For those things you can
never get enough horsepower. But server applications do rather well on
the Mac, even something that is a little more demanding such as
telephony.

So, unless you really want to saturate one or more quad T1 cards I
believe a G5 is overkill. A refurbed G4 will probably be more than
enough for most Asterisk applications.
> Any other catches when running Asterisk on PPC?
G.729 codec is not available, at least not yet.

No on board serial ports on the desktops/towers (only USB) which may
limit your choice of UPS system if you want the UPS to be able to
shutdown your Asterisk server. You can of course put a serial port PCI
card into the box, but that wastes a precious PCI slot which you could
use for another Zaptel card. The Xserve 1U servers have serial ports
though. Pre-G3 vintage Macs also had serial ports (before USB).

rgds
benjk

-- 
Sunrise Telephone Systems, 9F Shibuya Daikyo Bldg., 1-13-5 Shibuya,
Tokyo, Japan.

NB: Spam filters in place. Messages unrelated to the * mailing lists
may get trashed.

In my case, I was running two X100P's. Not exactly the TDM40, but
should be the same concept. The driver for that card is slightly
different, in the fact that it uses the wcfxs kernel module (even on
FXO interfaces), rather than the wcfxo module of the X100P. However, I
doubt it makes a difference, the hardware should be compatible. It
sure works great on my 8500.

Brian


On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 10:32:07 +0800, S E <stuart@castleis.com.au>
wrote:
> What zaptel hardware are you running with the Mac?
> 
> I have been trying to get a TDM400 working (4 port fxo/fxs card) with a
> Pentium and it doesn't work, but I have a spare 8600 Power PC available
> and so was considering giving it a try.
> 
> Any pointers would be great.
> 
> Stuart
> On Wednesday, Oct 20, 2004, at 02:34 Australia/Perth, Brian McSpadden
> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> > I can't say that I have yet had extensive experience with it yet,
but
> > what I have seen is promising. I, like you had read the posts
> > promising wonderful bliss, not dealing with echo issues and interrupts
> >  I was running Asterisk on PowerPC.
> >
> > So, I bought an old Powermac 8500 on eBay, for $20, to try it for
> > myself. I'll have to say, I was pleasantly surprised with the
result.
> > I got Yellow Dog Linux loaded on it, got Asterisk loaded up, the
> > zaptel hardware works great, and there was no echo, period. It really
> > was amazing. There are only a few combinations we've found that
> > produce no echo on Intel hardware. I don't know if these results
say
> > that there won't be a problem with other PPC hardware, but it is
very
> > promising. This was only a 180 mHz machine, and it performed
> > beatifully, transcoding GSM to ULAW and iLBC to ULAW, on two channels
> > concurrently. (I didn't have any more channels to test with at the
> > time, but I believe it would handle more).
> >
> > I can see a few disadvantages, however. Apple hardware can be a little
> > more expensive. I realize it is more powerful than its Intel
> > counterparts, but in many situations, you don't need the extra
power
> > that the money buys you. There also is no g729 binary for PowerPC, so
> > it won't do 729 either, which may or may not be a big deal.
> >
> > Brian
> >
> >
> > On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 13:50:28 -0400, mattf
<mattf@vicimarketing.com>
> > wrote:
> >> With today's apple release of faster/cheaper hardware(PowerPC
1.8GHz
> >> for
> >> $1499) and the bragging I've heard by several Mac Hardware
Asterisk
> >> users
> >> about how it's SO much better on PowerPC than on Intel/AMD.
> >>
> >> I was wondering if anyone has any side-by-side comparisons of
> >> capacity on
> >> Mac hardware vs. Intel/AMD hardware, doesn't have to be
anything
> >> official,
> >> just some people with real-world asterisk on PPC experience.
I'm
> >> interested
> >> in number of Sip -> Zap concurrent conversations as well as
just how
> >> many
> >> pure Zap channels you can have running concurrently on the Mac
> >> hardware
> >> platform(One user bragged of three quad T1 digium cards all being
in
> >> use at
> >> once[over 200 Zap channels]).
> >>
> >> Are these claims true?
> >>
> >> Is Asterisk easier to install on YellowDog or is another distro
> >> better on
> >> PPC Hardware?
> >>
> >> How much does clock speed of the PPC matter from 1.8GHz-single to
> >> 2.5GHz-dual in terms of capacity?
> >>
> >> Any other catches when running Asterisk on PPC?
> >>
> >> Yes, I have read the Wiki on this subject:
> >> http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+MacOSX+Support
> >> http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+Linux+Yellow+Dog
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>
> >> MATT---
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> >> Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
> >> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> >> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
> >>    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> 
> 
> > Asterisk-Users mailing list
> > Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
> > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
> >    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> >
> 
>