[asterisk-users] Fax for Asterisk success rates?

[Brett Lehrer]

>What is the setup you're talking about ?
>Is it something like this ?
>PSTN ---- nexVortex T.38 gateway ----- Internet ----- DSL modem ---
>Asterisk ---- Fax machine
Olivier,

Sorry, I did a poor job explaining that.  That's basically correct, with the receiving end first and our originating end last in your diagram.  For outgoing faxes only, this is the setup:

Fax interface (LAN website, in short) -> Asterisk PBX -> DSL modem -> Internet -> nexVortex trunk -> [recipient]

Incoming faxes are generally more reliable, but I still get small number of failures.  I've mistakenly overestimated the incoming failure rate.  Don't have clean statistics on that, though.


> Unexplainable FAX call failures (i.e. not wrong numbers of other 
>obviously wrong things) should be well below 1%. On a dedicated DSL 
>line, if everything is set up properly you should be getting that kind 
>of rate. This is especially true if you are using T.38 and the provider 
>at the far end uses a decent T.38 platform. Across the open internet 
>results are much more variable.

>Depending what causes your 25% failures, you may get better results with 
>spandsp than with FFA.

>Steve
I see, thanks.  All of these faxes are going out to unknown, external machines.  I have no control over anything on their ends, and the hardware/connection is as variable as you could imagine.  I'll definitely look into SpanDSP.  FWIW, the dedicated DSL line is just a 6 Mbps up/768 Kbps down Internet connection that is solely used by our in-house PBX to connect to the trunk.


>However I'd just suggest that you look at the business case for screwing around with fax at all.
Oh man, if only...  I'd LOVE to just drop fax completely and use email instead.

Brett Lehrer