[asterisk-users] Fax for Asterisk success rates?

[Lee Howard]

On 10/04/2012 09:27 AM, Carlos Alvarez wrote:
> However I'd just suggest that you look at the business case for 
> screwing around with fax at all.  As a society, if we had decided to 
> stop supporting this dead technology years ago, with all the time and 
> money we've collectively wasted we could have completely eliminated 
> world hunger.

I recognize that you're being a bit facetious in this latter comment, 
but the argument that you're making here is unfounded.  I believe that 
if you were to look at the Davidson Consulting reports about the fax 
industry for as long as those reports have been available you'd find 
this.  The technology is not dead and has enough momentum to propel it 
forward for many years to come.  Maybe this is understood in your 
acknowledgement of "society" supporting it, but the reason why it's 
supported is because the technology is sound and fills a very valuable 
purpose in business and other activities.

There is no adequate replacement for fax.  E-mail doesn't do it, and 
most other reliable document communication mechanisms are locked-up in 
proprietary patents and interests that will invariably prevent them from 
becoming standardized at all.

I'm not a big T.38 fan-boy, although I do applaud the ITU for that 
attempt to get fax working on IP networks.  Unfortunately, it's 
fundamentally flawed because it needlessly perpetuates the tether 
between fax and telephony.  In an IP network there is no reason 
whatsoever for fax to be saddled on top of a telephony layer.  Fax is 
data communication, and IP networks are quite effective at data 
communication.  I can envision a future fax system which truly uses 
modern IP network designs such as DNS, encryption, security, and rides 
on a very effective communication protocol and yet continues to operate 
on the fundamental communication protocol defined in ITU T.30 which 
makes well-implemented faxing so dependable.

> I can't count the hundreds of hours I've wasted on fax support just to 
> prop up this stupid and unnecessary technology.

Many others have felt exactly the same way, and I don't mean to be rude, 
but invariably the reason why they feel this way is because they 
repeatedly tried to do it the wrong way.

> We just made the decision this week to outsource it all and never deal 
> with it on our network again.  I am slowly re-gaining my sanity 
> because of that decision.

And until the new technology comes along that is and will be *precisely* 
the right decision for most of the people who move to a virtual 
environment or who completely detach themselves directly from the PSTN.

> Now I'm going to take a fax machine out to the parking lot and shoot 
> it, even talking about this awful waste of time makes my blood boil.

Well, if you were using stand-alone fax machines then that was part of 
your problem.

Thanks,

Lee.