asterisk users - Apr 2006 - Asterisk Performance 350 Concurrent Channels Working Nicely

Hi All,

This is a performance update.  I have built appliance type servers
with the following specs:

Motherboard Asus P5MT-M
Memory 1Gig DDR2
No hard drive, running in Ramdrive but using Sandisk Compact Flash to
hold compressed image and /var directory
Processor 3.2 Gig Pentium 4, HT Turned Off
2 on-board Gig NICs

I'm using asterisk with looping call test configs to play audio and
using 3 of the same spec servers to pound calls through 1 server.  I
managed to get 350 concurrent calls through with perfect audio
consistently with ~20% idle processor load.  Anything above that and
things start breaking up.  Using the latest 1.2.6 stable asterisk, I'm
running into a limit of 276 SIP calls and no more.  IAX calls can go
400+, so I test with combination 200+ SIP calls and the rest IAX and a
combination of more and less SIP and IAX calls.

Memory usage never goes over 256Meg, not sure why.

Interesting, findings are very consistent with other performance
testing that has been done over the years, Astertest and the like.

HT turned on, SMB loaded in the kernel gave ~20% performance increase,
BUT, using 425 + channels gave very inconsistent results, choppy
audio, calls dropped, no audio, call setup time slowed.  Good results
below that mark, but not enough to warrant using full time.  I'd
rather build for stability and reliability than for all-out
performance.

Not too shabby, I'm very happy with this setup.

JR
--
JR Richardson
Engineering for the Masses