Greetings list, Has anyone done any research into call routing and transcoding performance using a Via Epia based platform? We have a client with a box in a datacentre with 2 PRIs going into the machine. We've moved most of their asterisk handling into another more cost effective datacentre, but the cost of moving the PRIs is prohibitive. (to give you an idea, they're paying as much for the single rackspace in the first DC as they are for a whole rack in the new DC) In a nutshell, what we're looking to do is to replace the asterisk box in the expensive datacentre with a low power consumption 1U chassis that'll simply take calls coming in on the PRIs and kick them out via IAX to one or other of the new asterisk servers in the other datacentre. In an ideal world, the first box would also transcode the calls to something like g729 or (ideally) Speex to save bandwidth between the two locations (since the DC also charges for that), but I'm not sure that's realistic given the hardware we're looking to use. Any thoughts gratefully appreciated. Regards, Chris -- C.M. Bagnall, Director, Minotaur I.T. Limited This email is made from 100% recycled electrons
Kristian Kielhofner
2006-Sep-13 15:46 UTC
[asterisk-users] Via Epia platforms and asterisk
Chris Bagnall wrote:> Greetings list, > > Has anyone done any research into call routing and transcoding performance > using a Via Epia based platform? > > We have a client with a box in a datacentre with 2 PRIs going into the > machine. We've moved most of their asterisk handling into another more cost > effective datacentre, but the cost of moving the PRIs is prohibitive. > > (to give you an idea, they're paying as much for the single rackspace in the > first DC as they are for a whole rack in the new DC) > > In a nutshell, what we're looking to do is to replace the asterisk box in > the expensive datacentre with a low power consumption 1U chassis that'll > simply take calls coming in on the PRIs and kick them out via IAX to one or > other of the new asterisk servers in the other datacentre. > > In an ideal world, the first box would also transcode the calls to something > like g729 or (ideally) Speex to save bandwidth between the two locations > (since the DC also charges for that), but I'm not sure that's realistic > given the hardware we're looking to use. > > Any thoughts gratefully appreciated. > > Regards, > > ChrisChris, While I have not done extensive testing, Asterisk seems to be quite capable on VIA hardware. I like VIA hardware so much that I compile a special AstLinux image for them... Why don't you just keep is ulaw and IAX2 trunk in between sites? That would use at most about ~6000kbps with both PRIs at %100. The VIAs could definitely handle that. -- Kristian Kielhofner
On 13 Sep 2006, at 22:56, Chris Bagnall wrote:> Greetings list, > > Has anyone done any research into call routing and transcoding > performance > using a Via Epia based platform?Be a bit careful on the transcoding issue. We have a VIA Nehemiah 1Ghz acting as our office PBX, it has a single PRI line and is very happy running Asterisk 1.2.9.1 But if I remember the compilation messages right, it hasn't got some feature of the FPU that a 686 would normally have, so you have to run the codecs optimized for a 586. I doubt you would get 60 g729 channels transcoding on it. Here's the show translation output from that box. Translation times between formats (in milliseconds) Source Format (Rows) Destination Format(Columns) g723 gsm ulaw alaw g726 adpcm slin lpc10 g729 speex ilbc g723 - - - - - - - - - - - gsm - - 5 5 12 5 4 21 50 - 74 ulaw - 15 - 1 9 2 1 18 47 - 71 alaw - 15 1 - 9 2 1 18 47 - 71 g726 - 21 8 8 - 8 7 24 53 - 77 adpcm - 15 2 2 9 - 1 18 47 - 71 slin - 14 1 1 8 1 - 17 46 - 70 lpc10 - 27 14 14 21 14 13 - 59 - 83 g729 - 25 12 12 19 12 11 28 - - 81 speex - - - - - - - - - - - ilbc - 27 14 14 21 14 13 30 59 - - 729 is a bit expensive. Tim. Tim Panton www.mexuar.com/cards.html