Call Volume

[xCape]

Hello,
I have a Dell quad core xeon with 4 gigs of RAM.
A Digium TE420B card with 96 channels.

I would like to make approximately 30,000 outgoing calls in an 8 hour period. I am getting the channel_find_locked error after my campaign has been running for like 5 minutes. My campaign function is to call a number and leave one reminder message for a human and another for an answering machine. I am using GSM.

I have 96 channels and my remote agent 7777, setup like the Manager Manual, with 15 lines and I have 50 numbers going into the hopper. I am using ADAPT_TAPERED with the Auto Dial Level set to 60.

I have two questions:
1. Do I need to upgrade my hardware?
2. Am I tweaking the wrong parameters? i.e. Remote agent lines, hopper level, ADL?

Thank you very much.

[mflorell]

Do you have RBS(Robbed-bit) T1s or PRIs?

how long is your message that you are playing?

[xCape]

Do you have RBS(Robbed-bit) T1s or PRIs?

I have PRI's

how long is your message that you are playing?

The message that is left on an answering machine is 40.85 seconds
The message left to a human is only 2.62 seconds.

Thank you.

[gardo]

What is the load average on your system?

[mflorell]

If you have PRIs then you only have 92 usable channels. What is your server's Max VICIDIAL Trunks set to?

How rapid are the channel_find_locked errors coming?

Asterisk version?

[xCape]

What is the load average on your system?

Before I get the channel_find_locked errors my load average is around 1.5-2.0.

[xCape]

If you have PRIs then you only have 92 usable channels. What is your server's Max VICIDIAL Trunks set to?

My Max VICIDIAL Trunks are set to 96.

How rapid are the channel_find_locked errors coming?

They fly by about once every 5-10 calls.

Asterisk version?

I am using VicidialNOW 1.1rc2 which i believe is Asterisk 1.2.27.

Thank you.

[mflorell]

Since you do not have 96 lines I would recommend changing that to 92.

If you get that warning every 5 or so calls then it is nothing to worry about.

[xCape]

Cool. I'll make your suggested change and fire away.

Thank you for your time guys.

[xCape]

In my extensions.conf, i changed the line:

exten => 8320,1,WaitForSilence(2000,2);
to:
exten => 8320,1,WaitForSilence(2000,2,30);

and this helped my cpu percentage and channel_find_locked warning.

I noticed that a channel would be 'stuck' and stay that way until i restarted asterisk. The 'WatiForSilence' function would be in an infinite loop on the CLI prompt.

This may not be a solution but it helped. I am doing around 4800 outbound calls per hour.

Also, is there a way i can listen to the AMD calls to see if they are leaving the message on time?

Thank you very much!

[mflorell]

If you wanted to listen to those calls in progress you could always use ZapBarge.

[mcargile]

The real issue is that WaitForSilence is broken in asterisk 1.2.

We wrote a fix for this a while ago which is an optional step in the Scratch Install for installing Asterisk. From the sounds of it, the fixed version did not get into the VicidialNOW release.

What is happening without the timeout is that every call going to the answering machine extension is getting stuck till the other end hangs up the call. All your 30 second timeout is doing is making it so that the message is being left after 30 seconds not when the answering machine is done playing it's message.

If you need this feature you will need to recompile asterisk on your system with the fixed version in place.

Our support staff is more than willing to do this for you. Our rate is $200 an hour. For VicidialNOW systems we highly suggest a 2 hour tune up on this system where we fix the known bugs in VicidialNOW and optimize it for your system.

[gardo]

The wait for silence patch is included in VicidialNOW since the first release.

The real issue is that WaitForSilence is broken in asterisk 1.2.

We wrote a fix for this a while ago which is an optional step in the Scratch Install for installing Asterisk. From the sounds of it, the fixed version did not get into the VicidialNOW release.

What is happening without the timeout is that every call going to the answering machine extension is getting stuck till the other end hangs up the call. All your 30 second timeout is doing is making it so that the message is being left after 30 seconds not when the answering machine is done playing it's message.

If you need this feature you will need to recompile asterisk on your system with the fixed version in place.

Our support staff is more than willing to do this for you. Our rate is $200 an hour. For VicidialNOW systems we highly suggest a 2 hour tune up on this system where we fix the known bugs in VicidialNOW and optimize it for your system.