Asterisk - 800 SIP Phones?

Hi,

I am successfully running Asterisk(1.4) at two different sites with following setup.

PSTN (2xT1) -->TE212P+Asterisk–>WAN–>Asterisk–>100 SIP Phones (Cisco)

Asterisk application is running on Dell PowerEdge 2950 (Dual Xeon Processors) with 2GB RAM and 300GB HDD with RAID-1 (Hardware RAID Controller). Entire setup is QoS enabled and no issues. I am only using basic features (Voicemail, VM to email). I am not using IVR, Queues, MeetMe, and AGI etc. Codec between Asterisk Servers is GSM. I have dedicated TFTP & DHCP Servers in the infrastructure. NTP is running on Asterisk.

Now I have 2 more projects with nearly same requirements. 1st one with 300 SIP phones & 2nd with 800 SIP phones. I read ‘Asterisk at large’ and ‘Asterisk dimensioning’ etc from voip-info.org. Finally unable to make right decision – need help.

Even with bigger hardware, I still feel that I need help at 3 major requirements:

  1. Zaptel number of channels (4xT1) or (8xT1)
  2. Number of SIP accounts handled by Asterisk
  3. Asterisk High Availability / Reports / Monitoring

I understand that CODEC translation will be a limitation. But I will be using TC400B on both servers to take care of this – hope this helps (G729a)

Friends & Seniors: This forum is great & I see lot of help around for many issues every day. Please extend your help to me in meeting my project requirements.

Thanks Everyone - Happy New Year.
LDP

May I suggest to use SER as a proxy in front of asterisk? and then use asterisk as a gateway to go to PSTN???

Hi,

Thanks for the response. Can Asterisk box handle 8xT1’s if SIP is managed by SER? Assuming Dell Power Edge 2950 Dual Processor, Quad Core & 2GB RAM.

Also, can you please suggest some useful practical documentation for SER?

Thanks
LDP

I don’t see why it wouldn’t handle it… You can have SER handle SIP calls and forward PSTN calls to asterisk…

Now on the SER documentation part, well whatever you can get from IPTel.org would have to be enough… the mailing list is quite useful.

I forgot to mention, as far as I know SER and Asterisk have serious issues when running on the same server, so you may need a second box, although SER isn’t really very demanding on processing power…

Sorry I can’t be more helpful…

Roderick

Hi Roderick,

Appreciated your inputs. Thanks for your time. I am considering 2 seperate boxes & read about some integration problems by having both SER & ASTERISK together. I installed SER earlier, but never integrated that with asterisk. Also, i guess Asterisk realtime is must to get this integration done? please correct me if i am wrong.

thanks
ldp

The way I use them I don’t use realtime, I do all the authentication with ser, (using a MySQL database though) and SER handles all the SIP part.

When you are going to dial out to PSTN if your number starts with 9 (for instance) you’ll just forward this call to Asterisk, at this point you know the user who’s calling is authorized (SER dealt with that already).

With this in mind, all you really need to do is to authenticate the SER into Asterisk and you’ll be good to go

Thanks Roderick,

My installations will be done in couple of days, will take your help if i fail to do so. Really appreciated your help.

Thanks
LDP

You’re more than welcome.

I’m no guru though (not even close to a real guru … yet), but I can do my best to help you if it’s in my power. You can reach me by PM, IRC channel (as rantsh) or just add hotmail to my screen name here.

Best of lucks

Hi,

I’ve done plenty of installations which are similar.

Although i think the system will handle the call volume, i think you will have lots of audio quality problems.

Instead of spending the money on the quad cards, you’re better of in a Cisco 5350or an as5400 with 8 T1’s, and you’re guaranteed good quality.

Hi REEF,

Thanks for the suggestion. I need little more information from you on the cisco product. can i send private message?

thanks
ldp

[quote=“REEF”]Hi,

I’ve done plenty of installations which are similar.

Although i think the system will handle the call volume, i think you will have lots of audio quality problems.

Instead of spending the money on the quad cards, you’re better of in a Cisco 5350or an as5400 with 8 T1’s, and you’re guaranteed good quality.[/quote]

Hi Reef,
hi, I am wondering whether you can offer me some suggestion of the Cisco 5400 configuration setting.
I want to have the Cisco GW register to Asterisk as an extension by using user name/pwd.

Pls advise

Hi everyone,

finally i was able to install openser-1.3.0 and able to make calls between SIP Phones registered at openser.

Now i am working on integrating openser+asterisk-1.4, i guess i need more documentation in establishing the connectivity. Can some one help?

rantsh: can you please let me know when you will be online at IRC for openser? can you please help me in sharing for tips in getting the next phase testing done.

thanks
ldp