G.729 Howlet

Optimised audio codecs for Asterisk, FreeSWITCH & Callweaver

Our G.729 software codec includes patent royalties and is optimised to work on the leading softswitch platforms. It's GPLv2 compliant and compatible with 32-bit & 64-bit processors.

Extremely Efficient, Finely Tuned
In addition to Open Source telephony platforms, our API interface allows Howlets™ to integrate into proprietary soft-switches and VoIP applications. The underlying codecs and signal processing modules have been specifically engineered by Howler to extract the best performance out of modern processors. When compared to other solutions, our suite of codecs are substantially more performant across the board.

Howler’s internal benchmarks and methodology are published below, but don’t take our word for it – download the free trial and run your own benchmarks!

G.729A Howlet™ (Concurrent Calls)

Howler's optimised G.729A codec enables you to transcode more than 500 concurrent G.729A-G.711 calls on a Quad-Core Intel server, enabling cost-effective transcoding of Low Bit-Rate codecs without expensive hardware. As our benchmarks below show, Howlets™ are substantially more scalable than alternative G.729A solutions for Asterisk and FreeSWITCH.

Note that Howler is the first to offer a fully interoperable and indemnified G.729A solution for FreeSWITCH & Callweaver, as well as a unique floating license model for multi-server deployments.



G.729A 'Howlet' for Asterisk® – Dual-Core AMD Opteron @ 1.8ghz
A 1.8ghz Dual-Core Opteron Asterisk® system, combined with the G.729A Howlet, was able to achieve 225 concurrent calls at 180% CPU utilisation when terminating to a streaming wave file of spoken words. Voice quality of the two additional calls was reported to be excellent, with no degradation in quality and immediate call connection.

G.729A 'Howlet’ for Asterisk® – Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5405 @ 2.0Ghz
The 2.0ghz Quad-Core Intel Asterisk® system, combined with the G.729A Howlet, was able to achieve 500 concurrent calls at 360% CPU utilisation when terminating to a streaming wave file of spoken words. As in the previous test, voice quality of the additional calls was again reported to be excellent.

G.729A 'Howlet’ for FreeSWITCH – Dual-Core AMD Opteron @ 1.8ghz
The 1.8ghz Dual-Core Opteron FreeSWITCH system, combined with the G.729A Howlet, was able to achieve 235 concurrent calls at 180% CPU utilisation when terminating to a streaming wave file of spoken words. Voice quality of the two additional calls was reported to be excellent, with no degradation in quality and immediate call connection.

G.729A 'Howlet' for FreeSWITCH – Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5405 @ 2.0Ghz
Awaiting results.

Test Platform
All benchmarks were performed using the hardware specified with the software below:
  • Dual-Core VoIP Server: SunFire X2100 M2 (Dual-Core AMD Opteron 1210 1.8Ghz)
  • Debian 4.0 with Linux 2.6.18-6 (32-bit)
  • FreeSWITCH SVN r10374
  • Asterisk 1.4.24.1
  • Howler G.729A 'Howlet’ v0.8.0

  • Quad-Core VoIP Server: Boston SuperMicro (Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5045 @ 2.00Ghz)
  • Fedora 8 (Werewolf) with Linux 2.6.23.1-42
  • FreeSWITCH SVN r10374
  • Asterisk 1.4.24
  • Howler G.729A 'Howlet’ v0.8.0

  • Load Generator: SunFire X2100 M2 (Dual-Core AMD Opteron 1210 1.8Ghz)
  • SIPP v3.1-PCAP
If you have any queries regarding the validity or methodology of the benchmarks please contact us.

Testing Methodology
Calls were generated from the load generation host running SIPP, to the VoIP Server in test on which was running the relevant soft-switch application only. Each call terminated on an extension that streamed a wave file from disk to the caller. The number of concurrent calls was increased until the CPU utilisation reached a peak of 90% on each core, sustained for several seconds. Two individuals then made G.729A calls into the system from Linksys VoIP phones, and listened to them for several minutes to assess call quality. The test was repeated several times to ensure accuracy and quality, and an average of the results taken.