[asterisk-users] RE: Bottom line on fax reception

[Jon Pounder]

Quoting Steve Totaro <stotaro at asteriskhelpdesk.com>:

>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-
>> bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Jon Pounder
>> Sent: Monday, May 28, 2007 9:10 PM
>> To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
>> Subject: RE: [asterisk-users] RE: Bottom line on fax reception
>>
>> Quoting Steve Totaro <stotaro at asteriskhelpdesk.com>:
>>
>> > If you are a junk spam faxer then it should suit your needs.
>> >
>> > If you occasionally send faxes and if you do not receive one or the
>> > other party does not receive one or it spits out junk but that is
> OK,
>> > then it should fit your needs.
>> >
>> > If you are faxing contracts or other important documents that are
> worth
>> > something, then go for a more reliable solution.
>> >
>> > On a 3ghz HP DL320 with a gig of RAM, each fax took about 5%
> indicated
>> > by top.  I would not want to go above ten simultaneous faxes so I
> setup
>> > ten IAX Modems (50% in top).  Even at that rate, there were a lot of
>> > failures.  I did not bother to figure out why because these were
> legal
>> > contracts, in bulk, amounting to big dollars.
>>
>> anyone have a comparison with a multicpu machine with the same or
>> lower clock rate ?
>>
>
> Let me further qualify my results.  This was done with whatever the
> current stable versions of Asterisk, Hylafax, and IAXmodem were
> available in January of this year.  The faxes were outbound.  PDFs put
> into a Samba share and a cron job moving them over to the Hylafax
> monitored directory.
>

for my application I am more concerned with inbound working, outbound  
is just a bonus if it works. one of the big points is when you have a  
distributed workforce conventional fax machines don't work out since  
you get a paper result in one place and the recipient in another.  
Hylafax output can easily be redirected from a general delivery  
mailbox, or people can have their own fax extensions or DID to  
automate delivery even more. In my application voip itself really  
doesn't factor in either, the fax setup is on the same box the analog  
lines physically terminate at.

I have had pretty good luck with an old slow machine, ancient  
asterisk, low quality channel bank, and a physical fax modem on the  
same box as asterisk running hylafax, analog line in - pbx - analog  
line out - faxmodem, occasionally I get errors on faxes, and rarely  
someone can't get a fax through, but giving them the extension of a  
physical fax machine always works. So I am not convinced that problem  
is purely to blame on anything other than the far end station.

What I would like to eliminate is the fxs port and physical faxmodem  
from the setup and use iaxmodem instead (frees up a port, plus doesn't  
need faxmodem at all, and less complicated) it sounds like this sort  
of configuration works pretty well according to most of the posters. I  
know there are some issues with fax autodetection, but normally the  
sender fax is programmed to retry a few times, and failing that, your  
answer message could include a message to hit start on the fax machine  
if it does not start automatically, or dial an extension manually to  
start it.

another thing I like to do is if I scribble something down on a piece  
of paper, I just drop it in the fax machine and send it to the fax  
modem by calling its extension, I get a nicely scanned pdf in the mail  
that I can then forward to  anyone without knowing their fax number or  
paying for a fax call, great for emailing diagrams of things without  
taking the time to draw them on the computer.



> Thanks,
> Steve Totaro
> www.asteriskhelpdesk.com
>
>>
>>
>>
>> >
>> > The variables are very simple for any of these kind of decisions.
> Don't
>> > think about savings, think about costs.
>> >
>> > Costs of equipment
>> > Costs of time (resources) implementing
>> > Costs of maintenance
>> > Costs of losing data (faxes in this case)
>> > Costs of going back and doing it the right way if you find the above
>> > costs are higher than another solution.
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> > Steve Totaro
>> > http://www.asteriskhelpdesk.com
>> > KB3OPB
>
>
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Jon Pounder

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