[Freeswitch-users] FreeSWITCH and SOHO systems / HPET timers

[Giovanni Maruzzelli]

all centos 5 kernels are 1000hz with tick, only their xen version are
250hz with tick. If you look around you find a 1000hz kernel for
centos xen too

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 7:40 PM, Ognjen Seslija <oseslija at gmail.com> wrote:
> 5.6 has 1000HZ set and so do 5.4 and 5.5 on my machines.
>
> On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 3:30 PM, Brett Maxfield
> <brett.maxfield+freeswitch at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi List,
>>
>> I have been looking for a small SOHO software switch to manage one or two
>> phone extensions to initially one upstream SIP provider.
>>
>> I have installed the demo/example system on a few pieces of hardware which
>> while are not high end, nevertheless are OK considering the very small
>> capacity required for a SOHO system, and me wanting to reserve my better
>> hardware for more high end loads. The embedded fanless system i have runs
>> ok, but the voice for the test IVR is very choppy, and the same choppy
>> result on a atom dual core net-top (both centos 5.6). I understand that
>> tuning is a complex issue on a non-RT system such as Linux, and so
>> FreeSWITCH is probably only tuned for high end systems. This choppiness,
>> specifically on low end systems, is "mentioned" in previous list discussions
>> as being a timer granularity issue with the kernel.
>>
>> I've had some googling around and it seems that the newest centos version
>> supported by FreeSWITCH is CentOS 5.3, perhaps due to issues with timer
>> resolution in newer kernels. The stock kernel for 5.4 and 5.5 does not
>> appear to have a 1000Hz kernel, from what i can see, and xen stock kernels
>> that i have seen have 250Hz, which is different again, and would also be a
>> problem for FreeSWITCH running in a xen guest.
>>
>> So my question is, given the contentious issue this seems to have been in
>> the past, should i even bother trying/using FreeSWITCH for these sorts of
>> SOHO / low end systems ?
>>
>> Is there any plan to make FreeSWITCH tunable (in a non-default way) for
>> low end SOHO systems, which might have a typical 3-4 (say 10 at max)
>> connections, rather than being tuned for 100's or even 1000's of connections
>> by default.
>>
>> From what i have seen i quite like FreeSWITCH, and would like to run it
>> for both SOHO and learning purposes.
>>
>> I note that centos 5.6 does not explicitly mention CONFIG_HZ_* anymore in
>> the kernel config (/boot/config-2.6.18-238.9.1.el5.centos.plus), but it does
>> appear to have support for HPET :
>>
>> CONFIG_HPET_TIMER=y
>> CONFIG_HPET_EMULATE_RTC=y
>> CONFIG_TICK_DIVIDER=y
>>
>> There was talk of high resolution timer patches for kernel 2.6.17, and
>> hpet timers seem to be present in the 2.6.18 kernel, at least in centos 5.6
>> above (i have not checked previous versions).
>>
>> Given the increasing availability of HPET timers in newer kernels, could
>> features such as nanosleep() and HPET timers be used to avoid the problems
>> with the kernel's timer granularity / HZ issues ?
>>
>> Cheers
>> Brett
>>
>>
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>
>
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-- 
Sincerely,

Giovanni Maruzzelli
Cell : +39-347-2665618