[asterisk-users] Questions About Fax for Asterisk

[Steve Underwood]

On 05/08/2010 08:15 AM, Steve Totaro wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 2:01 PM, Martin <asterisklist at callthem.info 
> <mailto:asterisklist at callthem.info>> wrote:
>
>     On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 3:11 PM, Steve Totaro
>     <stotaro at totarotechnologies.com
>     <mailto:stotaro at totarotechnologies.com>> wrote:
>     > Yes, I purchased licenses for Fax for Asterisk and yes I called
>     tech support
>     > and had the WORST experience I have ever had with any technical
>     support
>     > call.
>     >
>     > I am running Asterisk 1.6.2.6 and:
>     >
>     > FAX For Asterisk Components:
>     >         Applications: 1.6.2.0_1.2.0
>     > voipgw01Digium FAX Driver: 1.6.2.0_1.2.0 (optimized for c3_2_32)
>     >
>     > The guy was arrogant and absolutely a jerk and I don't like to
>     call people
>     > names, but call it as I see it.  This has not been my experience
>     the five or
>     > six times I have had to call Digium over the years, but it has
>     been many
>     > years since my last call so I have no idea what the general
>     support staff is
>     > like.
>     >
>     > I could not get any questions answered by the tech that took
>     hours to call
>     > me back to tell me to read the readme.  That would be all well
>     and good if I
>     > didn't pay money.
>     >
>     > He could not explain Digium's math as far as faxing and failed
>     to offer to
>     > get back to me with any kind of answer.
>     >
>     > Maybe someone on the list can make sense of this Enron style of
>     accounting:
>     >
>     > voipgw01*CLI> fax show stats
>     > voipgw01*CLI>
>     > FAX Statistics:
>     > ---------------
>     >
>     > Current Sessions     : 1
>     > Transmit Attempts    : 0
>     > Receive Attempts     : 336
>     > Completed FAXes      : 320
>     > Failed FAXes         : 57
>     >
>     > Digium G.711
>     > Licensed Channels    : 4
>     > Max Concurrent       : 1
>     > Success              : 0
>     > Switched to T.38     : 0
>     > Canceled             : 0
>     > No FAX               : 1
>     > Partial              : 0
>     > Negotiation Failed   : 0
>     > Train Failure        : 3
>     > Protocol Error       : 0
>     > IO Partial           : 0
>     > IO Fail              : 0
>     > voipgw01*CLI>
>     > Digium T.38
>     > Licensed Channels    : 4
>     > Max Concurrent       : 4
>     > Success              : 175
>     > Canceled             : 0
>     > No FAX               : 6
>     > Partial              : 19
>     > Negotiation Failed   : 0
>     > Train Failure        : 83
>     > Protocol Error       : 33
>     > IO Partial           : 0
>     > IO Fail              : 0
>     >
>     > Thanks,
>     > Steve Totaro
>
>
>     wow definitely the acc"counting" engine is broken ...
>
>     I can only make sense of this
>
>     > Receive Attempts     : 336
>     > Completed FAXes      : 320
>     > Failed FAXes         : 57
>
>     1) your receive app was called 336 times but the fax hanged up before
>     negotiating
>     2) you had 320 of this completed (partially or fully)
>     3) but 57 out of 320 failed to transmit entirely
>
>     57/320=17.8% which is too high for a commercial product IHMO
>
>     Martin
>
>
> Considering that this is a direct cross connect from Leve3's cage to 
> my my cage in the same DC at an Equinix facility, 100Mb DIA w/EIPT 
> VoIP service, I would expect nearly 100% success.
>
> Considering the circuit was just turned up and there is no data except 
> Level3's phone traffic.  They are our carrier, RespOrg, origination 
> and termination, no 3rd parties, all on net.
>
> I could understand if it was a peaked out DIA circuit to some cut rate 
> VoIP provider, but not under "perfect" circumstances.
>
> Thanks,
> Steve Totaro
Were these all test calls made from a well defined source? It takes 
*two* correctly working FAX terminals to make a successful call. Its 
easy to get a high failure rate for silly reasons. In volume testing of 
spandsp and iaxmodem we had times where a high percentage of calls 
failed, which turned out to be just one rouge machine calling over and 
over again trying to achieve success. On the other hand, failures 
between known good FAX terminals should be far below 1%.

Steve