How much reliable FS + mod_spandsp is compared to other solutions (open source or not)? <br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2011/5/8 Steve Underwood <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:steveu@coppice.org">steveu@coppice.org</a>></span><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div class="im">On 05/07/2011 04:02 AM, Andrew Keil wrote:<br>
> Steve,<br>
><br>
> Thanks for your response.<br>
><br>
> Further clarification on my part:<br>
><br>
> 1) 20,000 to 30,000 pages per day to be sent out.<br>
</div>So, this is fairly small scale. A single E1 will do fine.<br>
<div class="im">> 2) It will be an e-mail to fax style gateway (not fax to e-mail since that would involve inbound faxes)<br>
</div>That covers a few requirements, depending what you expect to be in the<br>
e-mails - send the whole e-mail as a FAX; extract a PDF, Word document,<br>
etc. from an e-mail, and turn that into a FAX; and so on.<br>
<div class="im">> 3) The reason I asked about e-mail to PDF is the initial comments from my client requested the ability to send PDFs and WORD documents (I guess from attachments to the original e-mail), I understand the format that gets faxed should be TIFF so I saw on the freeswitch wiki email2pdf mentioned. Then ImageMagick can help get a PDF to TIFF.<br>
</div>If the incoming e-mails are limited to ones containing PDFs and doc<br>
files to be extracted and turned into FAXes things you seem to have a<br>
fairly well defined requirement. OpenOffice can be used to turn the doc<br>
files into FAXable images, but I am not clear how well the newer docx<br>
files are handled. Ghostscript can be used to turn PDFs into TIFF files.<br>
<br>
Avoid ImageMagick for this kind of work. It uses Ghostscript to do the<br>
hard work, but it doesn't get the best from it. If you use Ghostscript<br>
directly you get better control, and you can achieve good results.<br>
<div class="im">> Can I ask some more questions:<br>
><br>
> Q1) Based on your experience what would be the average time (in seconds) to send a single fax page (TIFF file) via Freeswitch& Sangoma TDM? You can quote a TIFF file size to make it more accurate. From there I should be able to do the math to calculate my Client's requirements better.<br>
</div>The time per page depends a lot on its complexity. I use a torture test<br>
file with images that take half an hour to send. Typical office work is<br>
probably 20s per page at 14400bps.<br>
<div class="im">> Q2) Running on CentOS and using mod_spandsp/Freeswitch& Sangoma TDM what percentage CPU usage would I expect to see if 30 concurrent faxes are being sent at the same time (ie. All channels of my E1 are faxing)? (The hardware would be a new 1U rack server from a major hardware vendor)<br>
</div>The greater part of the CPU load is likely to be what you didn't list<br>
there - the processing from e-mail to FAXable TIFF files. A single E1 of<br>
FAXing is a really low load these days, though.<br>
<div class="im">> Q3) What version of CentOS 5.x would you recommend? Would the latest version 5.6 be fine?<br>
</div>5.6 is fine.<br>
<div class="im">> Q4) From memory there used to be different fax quality modes on fax machines (STANDARD, FINE& SUPER FINE or something like that). Is it possible to set the fax send quality from mod_spandsp (also can you provide an example)? If this is the case could you also answer question (Q1) based on the different fax send quality modes.<br>
</div>You can't really set the quality in mod_spandsp. The quality follows the<br>
TIFF files to be sent. You can, however, select the image quality as you<br>
generate the TIFF files in Ghostscript. STANDARD, FINE and SUPERFINE are<br>
the right names, although many machines refuse to use SUPERFINE.<br>
<div class="im">> Q5) From exisiting deployments of Freeswitch using mod_spandsp (& Sagoma TDM cards (although this is not critical)) what is the largest number of concurrent outbound faxes done on a single box that you know of?<br>
</div>I'm not sure of the biggest, but an E1 of FAXing is pretty small volume<br>
these days. The biggest number of channels should be in the hundreds.<br>
<div class="im">> I appreciate your feedback and experience. It sounds like this will work fine with the mod_spandsp/Freeswitch& Sangoma TDM combination on CentOS.<br>
><br>
> I will most likely go for two servers with at least 2 x E1s in each, that way I future proof it a little and add redundancy. Plus my Client can start using Freeswitch for Voice related services also. On my side I can also test faxes going out on the first server and via a cross-over cable I can terminate them on the second server (for testing) - much nicer.<br>
><br>
> Thanks again,<br>
><br>
> Andrew<br>
</div>Two servers with one E1 in each sounds like more than enough to meet<br>
your needs, unless your 30k pages per day occur over a fairly short<br>
working hours, and the customer demands rapid delivery. Then you might<br>
need more channels to deal with rush hour.<br>
<div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
Steve<br>
<br>
<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br>