ASA 5510 - how many concurrent VOIP calls can pass through?

[geghamwic]

Hi all,

I wonder how many concurrent VOIP calls can handle Cisco ASA 5510, any idea?

Gegham

[Karthik Sivaram]

hi Gegham,

the Firewall throughput is up to 300 Mbps and the amount of Concurrent sessions that it can handle is 50,000 ; 130,000.

Here is a helpful link with the specs (see table 2 lists Platform Capabilities and Capacities of the Cisco ASA 5510)

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6120/products_data_sheet0900aecd802930c5.html

Hope this helps!!

Thanks,

Karthik

[geghamwic]

Hi Karthik,

Thanks for reply. So conisdering that each voip call uses average 32kb, Cisco ASA 5510 can handle about 1000 concurrent calls, am I right?

Gegham

[Karthik Sivaram]

hi Gegham,

Can you tell me how you have arrived at the above calculation?

Thanks,

Karthik

[geghamwic]

sorry, not 1000 calls...if we consider 32kb each call, than ASA 5510 can handle about 3000 calls, agree?

[Karthik Sivaram]

hi Gegham,

Basically what the values of  50,000 and 130000  connections indicate  are lab values  tested with 80% TCP and 20% udp  traffic. (according to table a-2 in the doc below)

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/asa/asa72/configuration/guide/specs.html#wp1170941

RTP  is udp traffic but in case of an asa and considering a customer  scenario what happens is...

1 voip call =  1 control connection (h323,sip,sccp)    +   2 or 4 rtp connections

-so a call will in total  easily consume  5  or more  connections depending on control connections you have set up .

-also this number differs depending on if the call is  voice only or video.

So to  simply answer your  questions...

1>the number of connections that a call  consumes depends on the above factors.

2>Also there is no hard number on the  number of calls an asa can handle because this depends on the controls  you use ...including nat and inspections.

Thanks,

Karthik

[darren25]

had the same issue. Thanks for the post