asterisk users - Mar 2010 - press release: Attrafax t.30 and t.38 alternative now released as gpl2 + commercial license

> Zoa wrote:
>> On friday we finally released Attrafax under a GPL2 license.
>> It comes with its own set of modems and built in transparent
gatewaying.
>> The solution should be quite stable as long as the line quality is ok.
>> (Some tools for measuring the line quality are included in the release,
>> as well as some fax2mail scripts).
>>
>> There is an example implementation included for Asterisk 1.4, if
someone
>> wants to porting it to the new fax backend or more recent asterisk
>> versions and needs some help, let us know.
>
I tested Attrafax this afternoon and was very pleased to see that it
worked first time right out of the box.  I tested the gateway function
with the Asterisk source in the tarbal, Zaptel 1.4.10.1 and a Digium
TE405P ver2 4-port T1 card.  I really like the console output while
processing faxes.  Very impressive.

Would anyone mind sharing any performance statistics based on real
word usage or even high volume lab testing?  I'm wondering how many
concurrent T38 to PRI faxes could be handled with high end server
hardware.  Where are the bottlenecks for the software stack, RAM, PCI
Bus, Proc Speed, Disc I/O?  Would there be a problem running 3 to 4
PRI's full of T38 to SIP Faxes on one server?  Could the Attrafax
software handle that volume?

Thanks in advanced for any feedback.

JR
-- 
JR Richardson
Engineering for the Masses

JR Richardson wrote:
>> Zoa wrote:
>>     
>>> On friday we finally released Attrafax under a GPL2 license.
>>> It comes with its own set of modems and built in transparent
gatewaying.
>>> The solution should be quite stable as long as the line quality is
ok.
>>> (Some tools for measuring the line quality are included in the
release,
>>> as well as some fax2mail scripts).
>>>
>>> There is an example implementation included for Asterisk 1.4, if
someone
>>> wants to porting it to the new fax backend or more recent asterisk
>>> versions and needs some help, let us know.
>>>       
> I tested Attrafax this afternoon and was very pleased to see that it
> worked first time right out of the box.  I tested the gateway function
> with the Asterisk source in the tarbal, Zaptel 1.4.10.1 and a Digium
> TE405P ver2 4-port T1 card.  I really like the console output while
> processing faxes.  Very impressive.
>
> Would anyone mind sharing any performance statistics based on real
> word usage or even high volume lab testing?  I'm wondering how many
> concurrent T38 to PRI faxes could be handled with high end server
> hardware.  Where are the bottlenecks for the software stack, RAM, PCI
> Bus, Proc Speed, Disc I/O?  Would there be a problem running 3 to 4
> PRI's full of T38 to SIP Faxes on one server?  Could the Attrafax
> software handle that volume?
>
> Thanks in advanced for any feedback.
>
>   
> JR
>   
CPU is the limiting factor, but on recent hardware you should be able to 
do 120 channels or more simultaneously, without it having to be really 
high end hardware.

We have a test tool in the lab, similar to the show codec translations 
on asterisk, to estimate how many channels you could do, i will have it 
added to the attrafax archive in the coming week so that you can 
estimate things easier.

To already give you some idea in the mean time, when we ran the test a 
long time ago on our very old single core p4 based xeon 3.06 ghz ( 
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+3.06GHz ) we 
could do about 40 simultaneous channels.

Ratings on recent cpu's such as the core i7 have a rating on the same 
website that is about 15 times higher, so i would presume that 120 
channels would be handled easily.

Greetings,

Zoa

Hi Zoa,

Nice work. 

1. It would be nice to have the T30 libraries and include files being
distributed to the root filesystem or externally defined DESTDIR.
2. Do you have any plans to put the libt30 integration automated via the
configure script in Asterisk ?

In addition, just playing around with the T.38 Gateway functionality shows that
it works fine with ecm disabled and speed 9600. However, I noticed few things:

1. If it is the ingress side (sending gateway) then it doesn't negotiate the
14400 even though originating fax device supports it, it always starts with 9600
speed.
2. ECM on capability seems to have an issue. If ecm is enabled on both the fax
machines, then it gets disabled internally by the gateway. Changing the code to
enable it all the time would fail the fax as well.
 
Kind Regards



      
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