[Asterisk-Users] Application Faxing using SIP

Sun Feb 19 08:06:26 MST 2006

If you are sharing a box at an ASP, you might have just identified the cause
of your problems.  Faxing is very time sensitive.  With voice, you won't
notice or care if there are brief dropouts of audio.  With fax, these will
cause resend of the raster line (hence the long delays).  If your box is
shared with other apps, you may not be getting the time slices you need
(very different from overall CPU power you are getting).

Can you get onto your own box at the ASP?

MD

  _____  

From: J Poz [mailto:jpoz0000 at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2006 11:35 PM
To: Technical Support; Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial
Discussion; Philip Edelbrock
Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] Application Faxing using SIP

MD,

Using an analog line is not an option for my service. My application runs on
a ROOT SERVER of an ASP. So I can do anything I want to the server but I
can't connect to or get external analog lines. So my options are doing
faxing via the Internet (VOIP/SIP) or use a faxing service. But my
experience with faxing services has not been too good as I've mentioned.

Does your company provide an affordable, reliable, and somewhat real-time
faxing service? Or can you recommend one? Otherwise, I have to experiment
and try to see the results I can get with doing Internet faxing. Remember my
experience so far with fax service providers - single faxes take 40+ minutes
to eventually be sent (and the delays are within the faxing service and and
not the receiving fax line - I've researched this).

Technical Support <support at ocg.ca> wrote:

J:

We developed the mail2fax application (www.generationd.com
<http://www.generationd.com/> ) - so we should be able to give some insight.
I think you are confusing the time to "process" the incoming (by email) fax
document, and the time to fax the document.  Fax over IP causes an enormous
number of retries - thus delays.  I would suggest you do some experimenting
with an analog line connected to your asterisk box.

MD

  _____  

From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of J Poz
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2006 4:17 PM
To: Philip Edelbrock; Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial
Discussion
Cc: J Poz
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Application Faxing using SIP

Thanks for the information. I prefer to try to develop/configure something
myself versus using an external provider. I currently use one (have tried
another) and there are no guarantees on reliability, timelines, etc. I'm in
need of as close to real-time response as possible (assuming the fax
machines on the other end are operational). Something like within 5 minutes
85% of the time. My experience with 2 external mailtofax providers so far is
terrible. Just yesterday, a simple 1 page fax took 42 minutes to finally
send it. Other scenarios were 20, 26 minutes, etc. The provider tells me
that they don't gaurantee anything but most of the time sending a single
page fax within 5 minutes 80% of the time. I wish I would see that but so
far I'm seeing terrible response times from the few I've tried. I also need
to know status of fax (in queue, failed, etc) in real-time so my application
and react appropriately (send notification to support staff, etc).

I've found one that does have some sort of guarentee by the cost of through
the roof and would kill my business model/plan (and the gaurantees are wishy
washy). So I think I need to "control" my own destiny.

And this definitely is not anything related to spam fax, etc. - legit
business but right now can't fully reveal.

So I'll have to research abit on IAXModem to use it. But your suggestion is
a good one. Can you share what Asterisk configuration you use to both
receive the iaxmodem feed and interface to the VOIP provider for such a
configuration.

Thanks,
J

Philip Edelbrock <phil at netroedge.com> wrote:

On Feb 18, 2006, at 11:35 AM, J Poz wrote:

> I have a specific business problem that I'm hoping someone has 
> ideas and/or has already worked out a solution.
>
> My application needs to be able to automatically create and issue 
> faxes to many different fax machines. The volume is going to be 
> very high. And it is only about sending faxes and not receiving them.
>
> My application is hosted by an ASP but the Linux (Fedora 2) server 
> is mine (dedicated). So the option of having PSTN lines to do faxes 
> is not an option since I don't own nor can put anything in the data 
> center. I found a SIP/VOIP provider that says they do faxing (and I 
> can connect to them using my own device (meaning asterisk or 
> something else if necessary)). Their requirement for faxing to work 
> on their end is to make sure i send them via their voip service 
> using G.711 codec.
>
> So I've done alot of research on faxing and asterisk and hylafax 
> but I' m still at a loss. F or starters, what is the architecture 
> that I need?
>
> my application --> QUESTION MARK??? ----> VOIP Provider ---> PSTN 
> ---> Fax Machine.
>
> So first question, what should QUESTION MARK be? Is it just 
> Asterisk or a combination of Asterisk and something like hylafax 
> (fax manager). And depending on that answer, what is the 
> configuration that has to be made on it. Even reference to material 
> that explains the configuration would be very helpful to me at this 
> time.
>
> Thanks in advance for the help,

The missing link might be iaxmodem. It has two interfaces: IAX 
channel for asterisk, and a serial device (in /dev/) which emulates a 
faxmodem. Then, fax away using hylafax. I have tried faxing over 
SIP through a provider (broadvoice) to a coworker's fax on the pstn 
this way, and it worked. I haven't done any testing in volume, though.

So you would have something like:

Doc -> hylafax -> iaxmodem -> * -> voip provider -> pstn -> fax machine

Phil

PS- I suppose if you had multiple SIP accounts with a provider, you 
could create multiple iaxmodems and do things in parallel (assuming 
enough bandwidth and cpu).

PPS- I hope you're not doing fax-spamming with this set up! ;')

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