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Asterisk Timing Interfaces
-------------------------------------
In the past, if internal timing were desired for an Asterisk system, then the
only source acceptable was from DAHDI. Beginning with Asterisk 1.6.1, a new
timing API was introduced which allows for various timing modules to be used.
Included with Asterisk are the following timing modules:
res_timing_pthread.so
res_timing_dahdi.so
res_timing_timerfd.so (Beginning with Asterisk 1.6.2)
res_timing_pthread uses the POSIX pthreads library in order to provide timing.
Since the code uses a commonly-implemented set of functions, res_timing_pthread
is portable to many types of systems. In fact, this is the only timing source
currently usable on a non-Linux system. Due to the fact that a single userspace
thread is used to provide timing for all users of the timer, res_timing_pthread
is also the least efficient of the timing sources and has been known to lose
its effectiveness in a heavily-loaded environment.
res_timing_dahdi uses timing mechanisms provided by DAHDI. This method of
timing was previously the only means by which Asterisk could receive timing. It
has the benefit of being efficient, and if a system is already going to use
DAHDI hardware, then it makes good sense to use this timing source. If,
however, there is no need for DAHDI other than as a timing source, this timing
source may seem unattractive. For people who are upgrading from 1.4 and are used
to the old ztdummy timing interface, res_timing_dahdi provides the interface
to dahdi_dummy, which is ztdummy's replacement.
res_timing_timerfd uses a timing mechanism provided directly by the Linux
kernel. This timing interface is only available on Linux systems using a kernel
version at least 2.6.25 and a glibc version at least 2.8. This interface has
the benefit of being very efficient, but at the time this is being written,
it is a relatively new feature on Linux, meaning that its availability is not
widespread.
What Asterisk does with the Timing Interfaces
---------------------------------------------
By default, Asterisk will build and load all of the timing interfaces. These
timing interfaces are "ordered" based on a hard-coded priority number defined
in each of the modules. As of the time of this writing, the preferences for the
modules is the following: res_timing_timerfd.so, res_timing_dahdi.so,
res_timing_pthread.so.
The only functionality that requires internal timing is IAX2 trunking. It may
also be used when generating audio for playback, such as from a file. Even
though internal timing is not a requirement for most Asterisk functionality,
it may be advantageous to use it since the alternative is to use timing based
on incoming frames of audio. If there are no incoming frames or if the incoming
frames of audio are from an unreliable or jittery source, then the
corresponding outgoing audio will also be unreliable, or even worse,
nonexistent. Using internal timing prevents such unreliability.
Customizations/Troubleshooting
---------------------------------------------
Now that you know Asterisk's default preferences for timing modules, you may
decide that you have a different preference. Maybe you're on a timerfd-capable
system but you would prefer to get your timing from DAHDI since you already are
using DAHDI to drive your hardware.
Alternatively, you may have been directed to this document due to an error you
are currently experiencing with Asterisk. If you receive an error message
regarding timing not working correctly, then you can use one of the following
suggestions to disable a faulty timing module.
1. Don't build the timing modules you know you will not use. You can disable
the compilation of any of the timing modules using menuselect. The modules are
listed in the "Resource Modules" section. Note that if you have already built
Asterisk and have received an error about a timing module not working properly,
it is not sufficient to disable it from being built. You will need to remove
the module from your modules directory (by default, /usr/lib/asterisk/modules)
to make sure that it does not get loaded again.
2. Build, but do not load the timing modules you know you will not use. You can
edit modules.conf using "noload" lines to disable the loading of specific
timing modules by default. Based on the note in the section above, you may
realize that your Asterisk setup does not require internal timing at all. If
this is the case, you can safely noload all timing modules.
Important Notes
----------------------------------------------
Some confusion has arisen regarding the fact that non-DAHDI timing interfaces
are available now. One common misconception which has arisen is that since
timing can be provided elsewhere, DAHDI is no longer required for using the
MeetMe application. Unfortunately, this is not the case. In addition to
providing timing, DAHDI also provides a conferencing engine which the MeetMe
application requires.
Starting with Asterisk 1.6.2, however, there will be a new application,
ConfBridge, which will be capable of conference bridging without the use
of DAHDI's built-in mixing engine.
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