[asterisk-users] Questions About Fax for Asterisk

[Steve Totaro]

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 9:56 PM, Steve Underwood <steveu at coppice.org> wrote:

> 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
>
>
These are not test calls.  These are real world calls from a real world.

Since this is Fax for Asterisk, volume is not really an issue, since I only
have four licenses on a brand new CentOS box (HP DL360 G6(or whatever is
currently shipping from HP).

Based on caller ID, it is not one caller inflating the numbers.  Generally,
a failed fax will succeed on a subsequent try.

Previously, we were terminating faxes to a quad port Digium PRI card,
everything from the OS to the hardware were from 2006.  Although, I do not
have exact numbers, they were much better from this "Unsupported" Digium
setup over this "Supported" and sold for profit solution.

Maybe there is a simple setting somewhere, but "RTFM" from Digium tech
support when the FM offers no suggestion on how to possibly tweak settings
for better success.

Thanks,
Steve Totarao
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