Is my CPU/RAM enough for this application?

Asterisk Asterisk Support
1

Hi everyone. I’m new to Asterisk and VoIP, but plan to be setting things up soon. I’m just wondering about CPU/RAM requirements and if what I already have will be sufficient. The box I had hoped to install Asterisk on is a 500MHz Athlon with 128MB RAM.

The goal for starting out is to have two or three inbound numbers, both possibly in use at the same time, and maybe a third for faxing. Both numbers need to have their own unique music on hold, greetings, voicemail, etc which could possibly be going at the same time too. This would be using hard IP phones. After getting started with that, I may expand with outbound calls using VoIP, as well as tying a few regular phones and phone lines into the system.

Is a 500MHz box with 128MB RAM running FreeBSD and Asterisk pushing it? Would an extra 128MB of RAM help, or would the slower CPU be the problem? I have an Athlon XP 2000+ with 256MB that I could backup, reinstall, and reconfigure for use with Asterisk if it would be better…but I’d rather not have to do that unless necessary.

Maybe a better question is “how much can a 500MHz with 128 or 256MB RAM handle?”

Thanks in advance for any opinions.

-Mark

2

try starting here:

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php?page=Asterisk+hardware+recommendations

3

there are several success stories of users running 4 or 5 simultaneous calls through a 200MHz pentium machine with 64mb of RAM…so it’s definitely possible with your box.

the trick is to only load what you need, both in the OS and in asterisk. if you’re not ever going to use the g726 codec, don’t load it. same for queues, call parking, etc…

you might consider looking at AstLinux, as it has been completely optimized from the ground up to run on minimal boxes, and i personally think it’s one of the coolest implementations of Asterisk i have seen…

another option would be “# key”, which is a soft appliance released by Digium through rPath - rpath.org/rbuilder/project/asterisk/

at this point, i would just go ahead and install whatever you like and just play with it - you will know within the first few days if your box can handle the load (and i would be very suprised if it couldn’t - that should be MORE than enough horsepower to run several lines concurrently).

good luck.