trixbox CE vs. Asterisk Downloads

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trixbox CE vs. Asterisk Downloads

As you may have read, Digium announced a sharp rise in Asterisk downloads for 2008 registering in a whopping 1.5 million downloads for 2008. That got me thinking just how does Asterisk & AsteriskNOW compare with Fonality's trixbox CE distro? Arguably trixbox CE is the either the #1 or the #2 downloaded Asterisk-based distribution. But are they #1 or #2? Let the Fonality vs. Digium download battle commence...

First, we head to Sourceforge, which tracks trixbox CE downloads and see how trixbox CE stacks up against Digium's claimed 1.5 million downloads.
trixbox-ce-downloads-2008.jpg

Date (UTC) Downloads Bytes Served
Dec 2008 * 18,050 6.8 TB
Nov 2008 31,000 12.2 TB
Oct 2008 35,187 15.6 TB
Sep 2008 19,449 9.6 TB
Aug 2008 6,948 3.3 TB
Jul 2008 8,329 3.7 TB
Jun 2008 19,993 9.3 TB
May 2008 21,822 13.3 TB
Apr 2008 18,238 11.0 TB
Mar 2008 41,085 25.2 TB
Feb 2008 27,725 16.9 TB
Jan 2008 43,942 26.4 TB
     
Total 291,768 153.8 TB

* Partial data: End of month not yet reached.
Taking a daily average, the final 2008 total downloads should be ~292,587.

That's 292,587 (year-end estimate) vs. 1.5 million (so far) for Asterisk. So it would appear Digium's Asterisk beats Fonality trixbox CE by over 5X!

Not so fast though. I was pretty sure the Digium download numbers were for Asterisk and AsteriskNOW combined. AsteriskNOW and trixbox CE are more comparable to each other, since both have FreePBX installed, both are .iso bootable CDs, they're both nearly plug-and-play distros, etc.

So to be fair to Fonality's trixbox CE, I should compare AsteriskNOW to trixbox CE. I contacted Digium's Bill Miller, VP, Product Management, and asked him for the breakdown in their 1.5 million downloads.

I told Bill my intentions of making a side-by-side download comparison, but also pointed out I had to wear my skepticism hat:

"The only caveat to any comparison I make between Asterisk/AsteriskNOW & trixbox CE is that you host your own downloads - not a 3rd party like Sourceforge. So there I have to have a healthy level of skepticism for any numbers Digium cites. Nevertheless, I think it'll be an interesting discussion if I post these comparative stats in an article."


Bill explained, "19.8% are AsteriskNOW. We are close to par with them.". Indeed at 19.8% of 1.5 million equates to 297,000 downloads or roughly 6500 more than trixbox CE. Although, I said above I had to wear my skepticism hat, I think the numbers Bill gave me sound credible.

Bill Miller ads, "Due to the other open source packages they have integrated, and the head start they had, we suspect that they have more in trixbox than AsteriskNOW in production but we are taking downloads and share from them."

I would agree with Bill that there are indeed more trixbox CE boxes in production, but it does appear from these numbers that Digium's AsteriskNOW is closing fast in production numbers and already exceeding Fonality's trixbox CE in downloads.

To be perfectly frank, I'm a little bit surprised AsteriskNOW has surpassed trixbox CE, since I'm sure even Digium would admit that trixbox CE, which was formerly Asterisk@Home, had a huge head start and developed a strong community (see trixbox forums and the sheer number of posts & threads). In fact, Bill Miller mentioned the head start in our conversation. Still, the number of downloads between the two is very close and they are neck-in-neck.

Of course, if you add in regular Asterisk downloads it's no contest. Digium wins by a landslide.


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