[Freeswitch-users] mod_conference scalability

François Delawarde fdelawarde at wirelessmundi.com
Fri Dec 18 09:41:44 PST 2009


It was of course just bad humor, I love both projects for what they are,
and I agree that both have their own advantages and inconvenients.

For example, accessing that same conference from a dahdi card could be
another goal where Asterisk would be at an advantage, as chan_dahdi is
still superior (in the more tested sense) than openzap+mod_openzap.

I just use both projects separately or together depending on what's
needed!

I'm no banker nor do I understand the code, but many thanks for all
those unpaid contributions providing an excellent alternative for free
telephony. Your names really deserve being engraved in google's cache
for eternity. :-)

But still, I would like to see those numbers...

François.


On Fri, 2009-12-18 at 10:34 -0600, Anthony Minessale wrote:
> Conferencing is hardly the best place to judge performance.
> Quality is a far more important goal to me in conferencing.
> 
> Lets compare who can do 48khz conferences with several 32k siren
> callers on a polycom 6000, several more using G722 at 16khz and
> another handful of people on g711 ulaw all at different rates and
> ptimes talking in near-real time with low delay and low echo.  The
> fact that you can broadcast the conferences to icecast, control it
> from an external application and play files etc, and oh yeah, it can
> stream video.
> 
> Frankly, considering this is a free software project and so many
> people benefit, i would rather focus on quality than what numbers i
> can get from having robots call the conference in some way that
> probably does not match reality.  I would love for someone to sponsor
> the effort to add features to the conference module, but of course, I
> do not hold my breath, instead I continue to improve it for free when
> I find time.  This is one of many reasons I do not enjoy performance
> discussions unless I am talking to an engineer who understands the
> code or a banker ready to pay for improvements.  That is not my way of
> saying pay me or forget it as you can clearly see the conference
> module has made it to where it is today with no financial support at
> all.  Just the efforts of myself and several brave volunteers over the
> years who have contributed to it.
> 
> BTW,
> 
> We have a weekly call, there is one today in 30 minutes.
> Drop by sip:888 at conference.freeswitch.org This is just an openVZ
> instance mind you running at 48khz waiting for anyone to call in and
> say hi.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 10:12 AM, François Delawarde
> <fdelawarde at wirelessmundi.com> wrote:
>         Hearing that Asterisk (1.4) scales 2x like FS is not common,
>         sounds like
>         a configuration error.
>         
>         If not, I already see the title of the next Digium blog entry:
>         "FreeSwitch scalability myth finally ends: The worst Asterisk
>         version
>         ever (1.4) beating the crap of the best and latest FS."
>         
>         Anyway, you should compare FS trunk to Asterisk 1.6.2 to see
>         who wins
>         the final conference battle! :-)
>         
>         François.
>         
>         
>         
>         On Thu, 2009-12-17 at 16:41 -0500, Brian wrote:
>         > I did a test with the trunk version for the one conference
>         case, and
>         > it is the same results as for 1.0.4. The audio failed at
>         around 300
>         > listeners. Oddly though, it consumed less %CPU (240% instead
>         of 300%),
>         > and yet the audio still failed at the same number of
>         listeners.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > Brian.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > From: Anthony Minessale [mailto:anthony.minessale at gmail.com]
>         > Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2009 3:49 PM
>         > To: freeswitch-users at lists.freeswitch.org
>         > Subject: Re: [Freeswitch-users] mod_conference scalability
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > We didn't post it anywhere but we just get overwhelmed with
>         them and
>         > many of them are unfounded and take up a lot of time to
>         track down.
>         > That does not mean you have not found a real problem but the
>         first
>         > step is trying trunk.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 2:32 PM, Brian
>         <brian at proximosystems.com>
>         > wrote:
>         >
>         > I didn’t realize there was a policy about load testing
>         questions. What
>         > forum should I have used for this?
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > I didn’t get the chance to test on FS trunk yet, but when I
>         do I will
>         > provide you with the feedback when I do. Just let me know
>         what forum
>         > to use for this topic from now on.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > Thanks,
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > Brian.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > From: Anthony Minessale [mailto:anthony.minessale at gmail.com]
>         > Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2009 2:42 PM
>         >
>         >
>         > To: freeswitch-users at lists.freeswitch.org
>         > Subject: Re: [Freeswitch-users] mod_conference scalability
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > One man's stable release is another man's 6 month old
>         release with
>         > hundreds of known fixed bugs.
>         > If one of the core developers tells you to try it, you may
>         as well
>         > take the time to try it now that you have opened a forum
>         questioning
>         > the scalability.
>         >
>         > When you tested asterisk did you actually use 600 phones and
>         verify
>         > that each one can hear the audio perfectly and in time with
>         what the
>         > speaker was saying?  Did you try same on FS?
>         >
>         > Did you optimize your dialplan on FS to deal with a load
>         test or
>         > follow any of the recommended performance tuning page.
>         >
>         > All of the answers to these questions are really moot
>         because we have
>         > a policy against entertaining load testing questions but if
>         you like
>         > asterisk, by all means, use it, and good luck to you if
>         those numbers
>         > you are testing at are what you plan to put in real
>         > production.........
>         >
>         > On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 1:29 PM, Brian
>         <brian at proximosystems.com>
>         > wrote:
>         >
>         > Hi Mike,
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > I didn’t get around to testing on the FreeSWITCH trunk yet.
>         Are there
>         > substantial fixes to mod_conference in the FreeSWITCH trunk
>         that might
>         > increase capacity for my scenario of one speaker and many
>         listeners?
>         > If I want to put this into a production environment, I would
>         need a
>         > stable version, which as far as I know is the 1.0.4 version.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > However, I did test on Asterisk 1.4 using app_conference,
>         and doing
>         > the same scenario was able to get 1 speaker and 600
>         listeners on a
>         > single conference with no audio issues. The CPU at that
>         point was just
>         > over 300%, same as where the single conference scenario
>         failed on
>         > FreeSWITCH with 300 listeners.  I was able to push it to
>         over 700
>         > listeners before I reached 400% CPU usage (I guess maxing
>         out my
>         > quad-core processors), and asterisk finally crashed. But up
>         until that
>         > point, there were no audio problems.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > I’ve read a lot about how FreeSWITCH is supposed to be more
>         scalable
>         > than Asterisk, but unless there is something wrong with my
>         FreeSWITCH
>         > setup, Asterisk was clearly the winner in this test – more
>         than
>         > doubling FreeSWITCH capacity in this case. Again, maybe
>         there is
>         > something on the FreeSWITCH side that I’m doing wrong, but I
>         don’t see
>         > what it could be.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > Brian.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > From: Michael Jerris [mailto:mike at jerris.com]
>         > Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2009 10:18 AM
>         > To: freeswitch-users at lists.freeswitch.org
>         > Subject: Re: [Freeswitch-users] mod_conference scalability
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > I would be curious what the same tests produce with svn
>         trunk of
>         > FreeSWITCH.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > Mike
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > On Dec 16, 2009, at 4:49 PM, Brian wrote:
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > Hi,
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > I’m new to FreeSWITCH and I’m testing the scalability of
>         > mod_conference to see if it will scale better that other
>         solutions. My
>         > scenario is to have one speaker, and many listeners (mute).
>         Since I
>         > have only one speaker, I was expecting this to scale well
>         because
>         > there is no audio mixing required, just send each frame of
>         the single
>         > speaker to each listener. Unfortunately, my testing was
>         disappointing,
>         > and it didn’t scale nearly as well as I’d hoped (based on
>         what I’ve
>         > read on how FreeSWITCH is supposed to be generally very
>         scalable).
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > Here’s my server setup is this:
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > FreeSWITCH 1.0.4, 64 bit CentOS 5.3, on a quad-core Xeon
>         server, 4 Gig
>         > of RAM. I’ve set file logging to “notice” level. My
>         conference profile
>         > is configured to suppress several events, hoping that it
>         would improve
>         > performance.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > Here are a few scenarios I tested, and roughly where I
>         reached the
>         > point of audio failure on the conferences:
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > Scenario 1:
>         >
>         >
>         > 1 conference, 1 speaker, audio failed at approx 300
>         listeners (mute)
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > Scenario 2:
>         >
>         >
>         > 4 conferences, 1 speaker per conference, audio failed approx
>         110
>         > listeners per conference (so just over 400 total channels on
>         the
>         > system).
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > Scenario 3:
>         >
>         >
>         > 16 conferences, 1 speaker per conference, audio failed at 32
>         listeners
>         > per conference (so just over 500 total channels on the
>         system).
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > Looking at the output from “top”, it seems that in all 3
>         scenarios,
>         > the audio quality failed when the % CPU for the FreeSWITCH
>         process
>         > exceeded 300%.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > I was hoping maybe someone else might have done similar
>         testing, or
>         > maybe has suggestions on how to improve the performance. Or
>         perhaps an
>         > alternate solution to the one speaker, many listener case?
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > Thanks,
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > Brian.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
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>         >
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>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > --
>         > Anthony Minessale II
>         >
>         > FreeSWITCH http://www.freeswitch.org/
>         > ClueCon http://www.cluecon.com/
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>         >
>         > AIM: anthm
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>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > --
>         > Anthony Minessale II
>         >
>         > FreeSWITCH http://www.freeswitch.org/
>         > ClueCon http://www.cluecon.com/
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>         >
>         > AIM: anthm
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> 
> 
> -- 
> Anthony Minessale II
> 
> FreeSWITCH http://www.freeswitch.org/
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