asterisk users - Dec 2009 - max. no. of conferences supported

Hi,

What are the limits with asterisk server running on one decent (4GB, 4 CPU etc.)
machine.

How many MeetMe conferences it can support? What is the limit of number of
participants per conference?

Is it possible to support 1000 users in Asterisk? What is the kind of hardware
needed for this?

Thanks,
Madhuri

> What are the limits with asterisk server running on one decent (4GB, 4 CPU
etc.) machine.
There are a LOT of factors involved.  You will likely have to do your
own testing with just the specific features you want.

> How many MeetMe conferences it can support? What is the limit of number of
participants per
> conference?
Are you doing any transcoding?  What technologies are the participants
using (dahdi, sip, iax, etc)?  If you're doing a conference with only
sip participants and no transcoding, on the hardware you mention you
should be able to comfortably host a conference with 100 participants,
possibly more.  I can't help you out with specific numbers, as none of
the systems I administer do conferences larger than this.

As for the number of conferences, I've seen one system with similar
hardware specs regularly host a dozen conferences without issue.  Most
of these conferences have between 5 and 10 participants.

> Is it possible to support 1000 users in Asterisk? What is the kind of
hardware needed for this?
Yes, there are a good number of asterisk installations with more than
1000 users.  In a recent interview with Mark Spencer, he mentioned an
installation with 150,000 users.

What kind of hardware all depends on what features/services you want
to provide.  All I can say is that you should pick and choose
features/services carefully if you intend to have a lot of users.  By
default, asterisk will enable everything.  Change it to only enable
what you need.


- Noah