On 11/08/2010 06:39 AM, Miles Keaton wrote:

I'm living in Singapore, and want to set up a FreeSWITCH server for my new small business.

We'll use SIP softphone software to make/receive calls worldwide. Some of my agents (people working the phones) will be around the world in Canada and UK. One will be making all calls from Canada to the US.

So... should this FreeSWITCH server be in Singapore?

How much does server location matter for call quality? (Voice quality + least amount of delay between two callers.)

Iirc the one-way delay should be no more than 150ms. Read ITU Recommendation G.114 if you want the details. Obviously minimal jitter and packetloss helps too. If both call legs are SIP then you would get something like this: agent <-- SIP --> FreeSWITCH server <-- SIP --> Telco <--> customer \___________________ 150ms ____________________/ Basically, less delay is better. So for agents in the US/Canada calling customers in the US/Canada it makes sense to put your server in a US/Canadian colo with a good hosting company that has fast, reliable connections to tier1 backbone providers. The same applies to agents in Singapore calling customers in the region. People on the freeswitch-biz list (or the asterisk-biz list) can recommend good (voip) hosting companies.

If call quality really matters would I be better off setting up one server in Singapore for local Singapore agents, and another server in the US for all the US outgoing-and-incoming calls?

Yes that makes sense. From a redundancy point of view that makes sense too. If one of the servers goes down, given the right config, the other server can take over. Sound quality might not be the best but at least you can still receive/make phone calls.

Sorry for the dumb questions. Just trying to make a plan before we begin. Thanks for any help!

The only dumb questions are questions not asked :)

P.S. I'll be looking to hire a consultant to help with this setup, so if you do that, feel free to also contact me directly: mileskeaton@gmail.com

Try emailing consulting@freeswitch.org or join the #freeswitch irc channel on irc.freenode.net and talk to the core developers (anthm, bkw or mikej). Hope this helps. Regards, Patrick

Some of the bigger factors are less to do with where the server is, but what kind of connectivity you get for it. The best thing I can suggest is to get trunking close to where your calls end up (Canada, U.S., Singapore), and locate the machine close to them. I agree that having a Singapore server and a North American server is a good idea. Normally, you can have the media path go straight from the SIP trunking provider to the endpoint, but it still has to go through FS to do IVR, queues, voicemail, etc. Put FS close to the trunking provider. Just as an example, we co-locate with a metro Ethernet carrier at 151 Front St. in Toronto. This provider has connectivity to the Toronto Internet exchange, and the NY Internet exchange. We get our trunking from a CLEC that is also connected to the Toronto Internet Exchange, and our customers are on ISPs that are also connected to TORIX. That keeps latency and jitter very low. For our U.S. DIDs, we have a SIP trunk with a carrier that peers on NYIX. Even though their equipment is in Denver, they are only about 5 hops from us, and latency is around 20 ms. We have one customer in Portugal, and they get better call quality with less latency than our U.S. customers. Their ISP is a vDSL carrier that peers directly with a transit carrier who is also on NYIX. A lot has to do with routing and peering arrangements. More so than physical geography. Traceroute is your friend here. -Tim

Hi Miles, I run a FreeSWITCH server on Amazon's AWS West Coast EC2 Cloud. We have employees in US, UK, Singapore, Australia and it works great. We use Polycom phones configured with HDvoice (G722 @ 16Khz) CODEC with no dropouts in audio. Chris. -----Original Message----- From: freeswitch-users-bounces@lists.freeswitch.org [mailto:freeswitch-users-bounces@lists.freeswitch.org] On Behalf Of Miles Keaton Sent: Sunday, November 07, 2010 21:39 To: freeswitch-users@lists.freeswitch.org Subject: [Freeswitch-users] What country should my server be in? I'm living in Singapore, and want to set up a FreeSWITCH server for my new small business. We'll use SIP softphone software to make/receive calls worldwide. Some of my agents (people working the phones) will be around the world in Canada and UK. One will be making all calls from Canada to the US. So... should this FreeSWITCH server be in Singapore? How much does server location matter for call quality? (Voice quality + least amount of delay between two callers.) If call quality really matters would I be better off setting up one server in Singapore for local Singapore agents, and another server in the US for all the US outgoing-and-incoming calls? Sorry for the dumb questions. Just trying to make a plan before we begin. Thanks for any help! P.S. I'll be looking to hire a consultant to help with this setup, so if you do that, feel free to also contact me directly: mileskeaton@gmail.com _______________________________________________ FreeSWITCH-users mailing list FreeSWITCH-users@lists.freeswitch.org http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/freeswitch-users UNSUBSCRIBE:http://lists.freeswitch.org/mailman/options/freeswitch-users http://www.freeswitch.org