Eric Phetteplace wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Let me start by saying Astlinux is great! I'm having
> one problem on my dev machine, though.
>
> I'm using VMWare applicance for Astlinux 0.4.2. After
> loading, I have plenty of free memory, swap, etc. in
> my WinXP environment. I'm running on a laptop with a
> Centrino 1.5Ghz processor.
>
> When I make a SIP call to Astlinux, the call is very
> choppy, with some packet loss I presume.
>
> Does anyone else experience this? Any suggestions on
> where to investigate?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Eric
Eric,
The VMWare Player image is not intended to be used in production
environments or ANYWHERE one might be bothered by less than great sound
quality.
VMWare + Asterisk is a bad combination. Even their server product
(ESX) has some serious quality issues when used with Asterisk. VMWare
Player running the AstLinux VM on top of Windows XP does not stand much
of a chance for good sound quality.
I created the image for people to learn about Asterisk and AstLinux.
It's quite popular with LUGs, schools, etc because they can install it
on any laptop/desktop and delete the VM when they are done. Quite
frankly, you would have to be crazy to use it in a production environment.
We were considering VMWare ESX for a project. It was demonstrated (by
me) that AstLinux running on a Soekris was able to provide better
quality audio (for one call) than the AstLinux VM (or any other VM)
running inside of ESX server, even though the host machine for ESX
Server was a fully loaded Dell PowerEdge 1850, with two Dual Core 2.8ghz
CPUs and 4GB of RAM. To make matters worse, the AstLinux VM was the
only VM installed in ESX Server. It was pretty embarrassing for VMWare
because a $200 SBC with Asterisk could outperform a $10K+ solution using
VMWare...
Several people from VMWare tried to weigh in on this. Most simply said
"not all applications are well suited to virtualization". Amen.
Asterisk would appear to be one of them. One of their engineers claimed
that he got Asterisk running inside of a VM perfectly. He was never
able to tell me which version of Linux, which version of Asterisk, or
prove it in any way shape or form. Hmmmmm....
My best guess at this (especially with VMWare under Windows) is that OS
scheduler latencies and the inherent latencies associated with
virtualization are to blame. VMWare works perfectly for most tasks -
web servers, DB servers, mail servers, etc. With any of these
applications, small amounts of delays and/or jitter in CPU
usage/interrupts/etc will not be noticed by the end user or
applications. With VoIP (and timing sensitive Asterisk) these effects
are essentially amplified and then connected to a speaker - your phone.
The vmware tools do nothing to improve any of this - regardless of what
the people from VmWare might claim... They only provide enhanced
drivers for various peripherals - sound, video, network (in some cases),
etc. The have some good management functions as well.
--
Kristian Kielhofner
_______________________________________________
Astlinux-users mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.kriscompanies.com/mailman/listinfo/astlinux-users
Donations to support AstLinux are graciously accepted via PayPal to [EMAIL
PROTECTED]
