Faxing and PCI (was Re: [Asterisk-Users] Digium cards,

[Nicholas Kathmann]

Olivier Krief wrote:
> 2006/4/18, Doug Lytle <Support at drdos.info <mailto:Support at drdos.info>>:
>
>     Nicholas Kathmann wrote:
>     >>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     > Both hylafax and * are on the same machine and using the same PSTN
>     > interfaces (whether T1 or TDM).  It uses iaxmodem to communicate
>     > between the two systems (imagine a softmodem).  I'll create separate
>     > extensions for the iaxmodems, then either map the numbers (or
>     channels
>     > off the TDM cards) to dial those extensions.  You can also use
>     the fax
>     > extension on your default incoming to dial the iaxmodem.  Faxgetty
>     > then listens to the iaxmodem to receive faxes, and uses hylafax to
>     > send them to the appropriate email addresses, printers, etc.  In
>     most
>     > cases I'll set up separate PSTN numbers for incoming faxes, but the
>     > fax extension also works relatively well.  The only time I've ever
>     > seen problems with faxes (or modems) is when trying to use a SIP or
>     > IAX provider over the internet.  To connect the analog fax machines
>     > I'll either use a linksys PAP2
>
> Please, forgive my ignorance but could you elaborate how your system 
> would be working ?
> I've read a lot about fax and Asterisk but I'm not sure I exactly got 
> it (specially with iaxmodem and hylafax integration).
>
> Do you mean that :
> 1. incoming calls would be routed according callee's extension 
> (extensions are dedicated either to fax or voice applications) and 
> only with that rule ?
> 2. you would exclusively connect existing fax machines to SIP ATA's 
> and hope offering users the ability to fax from software applications, 
> would decrease SIP ATA's use inconvenients ?
>
> Cheers
> Olivier
>
The incoming call flow (for faxes) would be as follows:

PSTN => TDM Card => Asterisk => iaxmodem => Hylafax => Email user (or 
printer)

similarly, sending outgoing faxes can be as follows:

User => Analog Fax => SIP ATA => Asterisk => TDM Card => PSTN
or
User => Hylafax (through email2fax or virtual fax printer) => iaxmodem 
=> asterisk => TDM Card => PSTN (read the Hylafax docs to find out about 
sending faxes from hylafax)

All of the incoming faxes don't actually go through the analog fax 
machine, rather through Hylafax directly to the user's email address or 
to a printer.  Sending outgoing faxes can be done in either of the ways 
above.  Once put in and the users are trained, the utilization of the 
analog fax machines generally goes down significantly.  I've seen 
companies consolidate from 40+ analog faxes to less than 20 (large 
geographical area) with hylafax and asterisk.  On your LAN you should be 
able to control voice quality issues to get reliable outgoing faxes.  
Incoming calls can either be routed through a separate DID for faxing, 
or through the same DID with what I showed you before.  Asterisk is able 
to tell if the incoming call is a fax or voice, and send it to the fax 
extension (iaxmodem in this case) using the fax extension.  You can run 
more than one instance of iaxmodem on a single machine, routing faxes to 
different email addresses from within hylafax depending on which 
extension they are received on.

Thanks,
Nick