[Asterisk-Users] T.38 fax summary

[Rich Adamson]

> Any computer fax application that I know of will write the image to 
> file, modern ones usually use TIFF.  HylaFAX, mgetty+sendfax, efax, 
> spandsp, etc.  Then you just write the glue to make it deliver that fax 
> image by e-mail.  HylaFAX already has that built-in, and just requires 
> some minor configuration to make it turn on.  I don't know much about 
> the delivery systems of the others.
> 
> > I'd be very happy if I could simply connect an old analog 28.8 modem
> > to the asterisk serial port, and drop a low-overhead app onto the
> > system to address the fax stuff for today. Something very basic.
> 
> If you're happy to use the hardware and have a PSTN line availble to 
> it, you're talking about HylaFAX.  But I suppose that any fax package 
> would work, with the exception of spandsp, which would require that you 
> use an Asterisk-compatible FXO instead of that modem.

Since there is a fairly large percentage of asterisk implementations
using the x100p/tdm soho interfaces that have problems with missed
interrupts (or whatever), approaches such as spandsp certainly isn't
the answer. At the higher end (larger corporations that may have a
much larger fax volume), there seems to be multiple commercial and
open source products.

So, for the smaller soho environments, using one/two analog pstn lines
as both fax lines and emergency backup seems very realistic. Particularily
if the fax software could run on the same box as asterisk. Is it at all
realistic to assume that HylaFax could coexist with Asterisk on one
box? If not, is there another known low-impact package that could at 
least address the incoming fax to email kind of thing?

Rich