[asterisk-users] Asterisk IAXmodem HylaFax?

[Lee Howard]

Damon Estep wrote:

> According to the wiki page 
> http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+IAXmodem
>
>  
>
> There are a couple of ways to integrate Asterisk and HylaFax with 
> IAXmodem;
>
>  
>
>     * IAXmodem as HylaFax modem, both HylaFax and Asterisk on the same
>       machine
>

In my opinion this is the ideal way to run Asterisk+IAXmodem+HylaFAX.  
If your situation does not permit this, then yes, there are alternatives.

>     * IAXmodem in conjunction with termnetd+ttyd from the termpkg
>       package (HylaFax and IAXmodem on distant machines)
>
> Does anyone have any experience that they would be willing to share 
> with the load and/or other performance caveats using termnetd+ttyd to 
> connect call origination on an Asterisk box with HylaFax on another box?
>
> Is it better to just get another PRI and card and run another instance 
> of Asterisk on the HylaFax box, or is the combination of IAXmodem, 
> termnetd, and ttyd lightweight enough to not have this concern?
>

In my experience getting the termnetd/ttyd connection to be resiliant 
(i.e. what does it do if the connectivity drops and then comes back up 
later) is not a trivial matter.

The other alternative, if you have a typical LAN connection between the 
HylaFAX box and the Asterisk box, is to run IAXmodem connections over 
the LAN - so your iaxmodem instances are on the HylaFAX box 
communicating over the LAN with the Asterisk box.  In my experience you 
really shouldn't experience any jitter on a LAN, and if you do then you 
probably have network problems.  I find this to be a better option than 
the termnetd/ttyd option in cases where it can be used (i.e. LANs).

IAXmodem and HylaFAX proper should not cause much load or performance 
degredation at all... so little that you can probably neglect it.  
However, the parts where you do need to worry about load/performance is 
to do with image conversion... what you do with the received TIFF image 
*after* it's received... what kinds of incoming documents are handled 
and how, etc.

Lee.