asterisk users - May 2006 - meetme conference latency degrades...

We have recently started making more frequent use of the meetme
conference of our * system.

We are using v1.0.8 with a 2.6.11 kernel on our system.

We generally have 4 callers in it: two with the gsm codec and 2 with g729.
Initially, the conference works fine and there is little latency.  After
about 15min., though, the latency is very noticable and by 25min it's
unbearable.

If we all leave the conference and return, the latency is unnoticable
again.

The load on the box is minimal, and only our meetme is running most of
the time.  Checking system load with top shows 0.1 or less.

We have no digium hardware and use ztdummy for our timing device.
zttest yields results generally in the area of 99.96%, but about 3-4%
will be as low as 95%.

In much smaller systems with Digium hardware, the accuracy is never
below 99.98% and is often 100%.

Is this apparent inaccuracy of the ztdummy timer likely the cause of the
increasing latency in our meetme conference? 

Is there any way to improve it?

Thank you, in advance, for any help.

-- 
-M

There are 10 kinds of people in this world:
	Those who can count in binary and those who cannot.

This is a known problem with the 1.0.x version of Asterisk.  If you do 
not use join/part sounds it won't happen.  I think the "q" option
to
MeetMe stops the join/part sounds.  This issue has been fixed in 1.2.x.

Michael George wrote:
> We have recently started making more frequent use of the meetme
> conference of our * system.
> 
> We are using v1.0.8 with a 2.6.11 kernel on our system.
> 
> We generally have 4 callers in it: two with the gsm codec and 2 with g729.
> Initially, the conference works fine and there is little latency.  After
> about 15min., though, the latency is very noticable and by 25min it's
> unbearable.
> 
> If we all leave the conference and return, the latency is unnoticable
> again.
> 
> The load on the box is minimal, and only our meetme is running most of
> the time.  Checking system load with top shows 0.1 or less.
> 
> We have no digium hardware and use ztdummy for our timing device.
> zttest yields results generally in the area of 99.96%, but about 3-4%
> will be as low as 95%.
> 
> In much smaller systems with Digium hardware, the accuracy is never
> below 99.98% and is often 100%.
> 
> Is this apparent inaccuracy of the ztdummy timer likely the cause of the
> increasing latency in our meetme conference? 
> 
> Is there any way to improve it?
> 
> Thank you, in advance, for any help.
> 

-- 
Now accepting new clients in Birmingham, Atlanta, Huntsville, 
Chattanooga, and Montgomery.

This is a known problem and it does not matter what zaptel timer you use. A 
solution is available in  'svn head' by using

asterisk.conf
internal_timing = yes

OR
Enable internal timing support (-I)

on the command line. I don't know if this has been backported to the stable 
branch.

Chris

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael George" <george@mutualdata.com>
To: <asterisk-users@lists.digium.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 2:48 AM
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] meetme conference latency degrades...

> We have recently started making more frequent use of the meetme
> conference of our * system.
>
> We are using v1.0.8 with a 2.6.11 kernel on our system.
>
> We generally have 4 callers in it: two with the gsm codec and 2 with g729.
> Initially, the conference works fine and there is little latency.  After
> about 15min., though, the latency is very noticable and by 25min it's
> unbearable.
>
> If we all leave the conference and return, the latency is unnoticable
> again.
>
> The load on the box is minimal, and only our meetme is running most of
> the time.  Checking system load with top shows 0.1 or less.
>
> We have no digium hardware and use ztdummy for our timing device.
> zttest yields results generally in the area of 99.96%, but about 3-4%
> will be as low as 95%.
>
> In much smaller systems with Digium hardware, the accuracy is never
> below 99.98% and is often 100%.
>
> Is this apparent inaccuracy of the ztdummy timer likely the cause of the
> increasing latency in our meetme conference?
>
> Is there any way to improve it?
>
> Thank you, in advance, for any help.
>
> -- 
> -M
>
> There are 10 kinds of people in this world:
> Those who can count in binary and those who cannot.
> _______________________________________________
> --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com --
>
> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>

I think you need to upgrade to the latest Asterisk. Your version is pretty
ancient. 
> We are using v1.0.8

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael George" <george@mutualdata.com>
To: <asterisk-users@lists.digium.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 2:48 AM
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] meetme conference latency degrades...

> We have recently started making more frequent use of the meetme
> conference of our * system.
>
> We are using v1.0.8 with a 2.6.11 kernel on our system.
>
> We generally have 4 callers in it: two with the gsm codec and 2 with g729.
> Initially, the conference works fine and there is little latency.  After
> about 15min., though, the latency is very noticable and by 25min it's
> unbearable.
>
> If we all leave the conference and return, the latency is unnoticable
> again.
>
> The load on the box is minimal, and only our meetme is running most of
> the time.  Checking system load with top shows 0.1 or less.
>
> We have no digium hardware and use ztdummy for our timing device.
> zttest yields results generally in the area of 99.96%, but about 3-4%
> will be as low as 95%.
>
> In much smaller systems with Digium hardware, the accuracy is never
> below 99.98% and is often 100%.
>
> Is this apparent inaccuracy of the ztdummy timer likely the cause of the
> increasing latency in our meetme conference?
>
> Is there any way to improve it?
>
> Thank you, in advance, for any help.
>
> -- 
> -M