A performance comparison of three SIP softswitches: Asterisk, FreeSWITCH, and Yate

In the telecommunications network or the public Internet, softswitches are the software implementation of central devices that connect calls between phone lines, usually executing on a general-purpose computer system. “Softswitch” is short for “software switch”, which implies the use of general purpose servers and VoIP technology, instead of purpose-built electronic hardware. This paper presents (1) an overview of some of the main characteristics of three popular softswitches: Asterisk, FreeSWITCH, and Yate ; (2) measures their performances on a designed scenario with identical initial parameters, and (3) presents the results of conducted performance tests. The methodology is comprised of two test scenarios ; Test 1 implies generating 800 active calls on a freshly booted system, and sustaining them for 20 minutes. Monitored parameters include CPU utilization and Linux 5 minute system load. Test 2 consists of sustained 5 calls per second, and monitored parameter is the number of active calls ; the purpose is to obtain the maximum active calls sustained. By analyzing test outcomes of the performed simulations, FreeSWITCH showed highest performance results in both scenarios.