On Nov 16, 2007 11:59 AM, Jim Van Meggelen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Or, Is Asterisk only for the Mid Level install, and something > > like a Free Switch is for larger ITSP, or is the trick to use > > several Asterisk systems... Lets say one install per every > > 250 concurrent calls? > > Asterisk is a bigger challenge at larger densities, and it could be argued > that it was not engineered to scale very well, but the fact is that folks do > scale it, and successfully, and the native scalablility will come (if not > with Asterisk, then with other up-and-coming OST projects).
It certainly is a challenge, but not impossible. Clustering Asterisk comes with an all new set of challenges from a single instance install, and is not for the faint of heart. There are limitations with clustering approaches, but does give you an advantage in that a single box is not handling all your calls. If a box goes down, then you'll lose those calls, but you won't lose *all* of them, and when you go to dial out again, the calls will be routed to a different box that is not down. I use a combination of OpenSER which is really just the registration endpoint that distributes calls to a federation of Asterisk boxes. To add capacity, I simply add another Asterisk box to the federation and add it to the dispatcher.list file. All my configurations are stored in SVN so it's simple to do system upgrades and provisioning. Everything is then distributed by utilizing a database, which is then itself distributed. That certainly adds a lot of development overhead, but I've found of bugs by building large dialplans and utilizing dialplan applications and functions in very powerful ways which then are fixed and make Asterisk a much better product. I've been using 1.4 for over a year, and I like to think I've done my part to help stabilize it while there are people who are still doing new installations with 1.2 (which I can understand -- use what works) -- but from a clustering standpoint, 1.4 is practically necessary in order for it to be practical :) -- Leif Madsen. http://www.leifmadsen.com http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/asterisk --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
