[asterisk-users] maximum simultaneous calls

Matthew J. Roth
Thu, 29 Mar 2007 08:52:20 -0000

Mark Quitoriano wrote:
> what could be the maximum simultaneous calls can asterisk do? i read
> about the asterisk business edition review[1] and it can only handle
> 120 simultaneous calls? i'm using 1.2.x branch of asterisk and i use
> more or less 90 simultaneous calls.
Mark,

We are regularly running 250-300 simultaneous calls in an inbound call
center environment.  We had stability issues for a long time, but using
weights on the queues was the needle in the haystack that was causing
our problems.  After removing them, our only failure in the past month
has been a single segmentation fault.

We are running Asterisk Business Edition.  I can't find a quote on
Digium's website about their licensing limits, but the site you linked
actually quotes up to 240 calls.  Our case is not the norm, because we
have a special agreement with Digium allowing us to have larger licenses.

Note that the use of ABE isn't a necessity for handling this many
calls.  The stable releases of the open source version perform well, but
they don't have any support attached to them.  Handling this many calls
requires eliminating as much overhead on the Asterisk server as
possible, running on high-capacity hardware, and troubleshooting the
problems that inevitably arise.

Matthew Roth
InterMedia Marketing Solutions
Software Engineer and Systems Developer