[TriLUG] asterisk cpu requirements

[William Schulz]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2004 at 02:00:44PM -0400, Wing D Lizard wrote:
> Jon hinted that it needs to be fast.  What is the reason for this?  I
> have say two trunk lines and two extensions.  I'd like to use it for
> a smart answering machine, handle maximum of two calls at a time,
> and maybe a voip call.  I'm planning on using the digum hardware.

The best reason I've come across for the need for speed is if/when the
machine is going to be transcoding (one codec to another), and
potentially, for recording vmail messages.

It seems as important to have fairly  zippy drives so that message
playback, music on hold playback, voice recording, etc isn't choppy.

That being said, I'm currently building my system around an Athlon 800
with a 40G drive.  Nothing fancy, but my needs are similar to yours.
Right now my bottleneck is Sprint DSL.
 
> has anybody got this running on a low end cpu?

I've heard tell of some P1's running it.
 
> what size memory is required.  I have an old dell I'd like to use,
> I think it is 400mhz p3 with 384Mb.

That should work fine.  In fact, it is very similar to the Asterisk
"recommendation" for that size setup [1].  For other recommendations,
see [2].  Serious (office?) users are directed to [3] for a dimensioning
checklist.

SWS

[1]  http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+setup+home

[2]  http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+hardware+recommendations

[3]  http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+dimensioning