On Wed, 18 Nov 2009, Jacob Suter wrote: <snip>
You're currently describing why I don't use Asterisk for my PBX - it seems to desire an outrageous amount of dedicated resources to make work consistently. I find FreeSwitch seems to work 99% better in these situations, but FreeSwitch's repeater control module (fs_rpt) is still incomplete and theres no Echolink or IRLP linking options (yet)
From my own tests I can say Asterisk isn't as much CPU hungry as it is "consistent performance hungry". Your old P3 is likely fast enough to handle the job, but when things like disk I/O occur (IDE and SATA drives *LOVE* 'eating' your machine's performance up during I/O) it just can't keep up for a few milliseconds, and asterisk doesn't recover well from the situation.
People tend to throw a lot of CPU at it, because CPU is cheap and easy, and end up having the same problems. I'm fairly certain $25 worth of surplus SCSI controller, cable, and disk off ebay would likely cure the largest problems you're seeing.
Also, while you're Ebaying, treat yourself to a nice Intel 10/100 adapter. I buy them surplus by the 10 pack, myself. Junk Ethernet adapters (Realtek, VIA, etc) are a performance-eater under any circumstance.
Good Luck!
JS
Hi Jacob, Interesting info about freeswitch. I had heard it was out there, but haven't looked at it. I've had excellent results with asterisk as a PBX over the last 6 years or so. There were some rough edges to start with, as expected with any software. We now run/use several asterisk boxes at different locations for my business; mainly connected to T1's and providing VoIP gateways, etc. And, we have a few FXS lines here and there for analog connections to fax machines, etc. All of these boxes are in the 1GHz CPU range, AMD CPU, and cheap ethernet. Aside from somewhat weak software echo cancellation, they really work great. We went ahead and deployed hardware/DSP echo cancellation where needed, and that issue was resolved, too. Anyway, for us, asterisk is very much a success story....But, we're not trying to "reinvent" the phone company, either! 73, David kb4fxc
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