On Fri, 4 May 2007, mail-lists wrote:
Stefan Wintermeyer wrote:
Steve,
Am 04.05.2007 um 14:44 schrieb mail-lists:
I'm trying to compile asterisk from source (1.2.18). Faxing is fairly
critical for us, so in the past we've used spandsps app_rxfax and
app_txfax to support faxing in asterisk. Unfortunately I can't find these
applications on soft-switch.org anymore
Forget them! Use Hylafax and iaxmodem instead.
Does anyone know how to best handle faxing in 1.2.18? Is it even necessary
to compile these two apps into asterisk? what about spandsp?
Any advice would be appreciated,
I only have a German howto available. But you should get the idea:
http://www.das-asterisk-buch.de/stable/installation-iaxmodem.html
http://www.das-asterisk-buch.de/stable/installation-hylafax.html
Stefan
--
Stefan,
My name is spelled Stefan too :)
I AM using hylafax/iaxmodem on my production boxes. I guess I'm not entirely
clear on WHAT app_rxfax, app_txfax do.
Are iaxmodem/hylafax essentially a replacement for these asterisk internal
applications?
I've used rx_fax (never tx_fax though, but I don't imagine an issue with
it)
So, as I see it: You answer an incoming channel, and plumb it directly
into rx_fax. rx_fax is a combined software modem and fax receptor. It
spits out a TIF file. I've used this on Zap channels with a good degree of
success.
iaxmodem is a softare modem. It's a program which takes an IAX channel and
gives you a serial-line like interface. You can send AT commands to it and
get/send digital data directly. This is what people connect HylaFax to.
HylaFax is a suit pf programs that have been about for donkeys years -
originally designed to talk to real modems (I used hylafax with a USR
modem many years ago and remember it being a PITA to setup which is why
I've never bothered to look at it - however that might have changed
recently...?)
So if you have a lot of experience with HylaFax, then the suggestion may
be to get iaxmodem and carry on with HylaFax, else consider rx_fax/tx_fax.
The downside of rx_fax is that you need to compile it into asterisk.
The downside of iaxmodem is that (to my knowledge) you can't easilly
implement an auto-answer/detect fax/voice/ auto attendant/voicemail
system. The channel must be dedicated to faxing, and that's that. This may
or may not be an issue for you though.
The last fax setup I did was for a small 2-person office where they had an
existing fax machine that answered, listened for the remote fax squawk, if
it didn't get it, then it rung the phones daisy-chained to it, and if they
didn't answer it went to answering machine. I implemented this in asterisk
fairly easilly with rx_fax. I'm not sure if you can do that with iaxmodem.
An upside of iaxmodem is that you can run it on a seprate server. You then
rely on an IP connection between the asterisk box and the fax box... And
we know how fussy modem signals can be over IP links.. On a LAN it ought
to be OK though.
If I'm missing something obvious (or my knowledge is out of date!) someone
can correct me please.
Cheers,
Gordon
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