Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
Hi, In my office I have 1000 ext, each users has it's own DID number. What I would like is that each user can get a fax using his own number. I'm fighting with this since some time too. My experience is, that faxing over IAXModem is not reliable. So I'm going with T38Modem, my provider also supports T38 and finally I got Mail-2-Fax with T38Modem, HylaFax and Asterisk 1.4 runnig. I still have some issues with Fax-2-Mail, I had to patch T38Modem to get it working with Asterisk and it only works with Asterisk 1.8. But anyway I think it's better using T38Modem with T38 fax, than using IAXModem that uses G711 and which often makes problems with sending faxes. -- Chau y hasta luego, Thorolf -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
Thorolf Godawa wrote: My experience is, that faxing over IAXModem is not reliable. My experience is just the opposite, but I'm not faxing over IP. PRI, over slinear. Doug -- Ben Franklin quote: Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
-Original Message- From: asterisk-users-boun...@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users- boun...@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Lee Howard Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2011 7:22 PM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues Ryan McGuire wrote: Unless your network is under load and you are seeing dropped packets and high jitter, I would absolutely not do T.38. The cheapest and easiest approach that I have found is to buy yourself an FXS gateway and just make sure you are using ulaw. As SIP is usually running over UDP/IP it doesn't take much to produce dropped packets. Dropped packets mean lost audio which means lost data and possible demodulation difficulties for the modems. If you're in an environment where dropped UDP packets don't occur you're in a very rare scenario. For the most part people who claim success when faxing over SIP G.711 are being rescued by ECM (error correction) within the fax protocol. There are very, very few who really have mitigated UDP packet loss. That said, all T.38 systems are not equal. Certainly, the reliability of your T.38 provider may not be any better than that of G.711 fax over the SIP UDP. I only recommend faxing over TDM everything else is at your own risk. Find a carrier, likely a CLEC, willing and able to quickly re-route numbers when you have an outage. This is telecom, you are going to have an outages caused by something totally out of your control. If you have a TN down for whatever reason, having a POTS fax machine or a couple of POTS lines into your PBX for your carrier to re-route the non-working TN to can save the day. Carriers use a variety of methods to give you dialtone on a pair of wires. Make sure the line is plain old boring analog all the way to your carrier's switch. Here is how I look at it. Assume 1 in 10 faxes fail when using ulaw with SIP on a nice stable QoS'd connection to your carrier . There is no specific percentage, read the mailing list archives; I don't think it is an outrageous assumption. Error Correction (ECM) can only do so much. For personal use, that might not be a big deal. For business use, it is likely to be a big deal. People get very annoyed when they don't get their faxes. If you don't need a large number of fax numbers and don't need to handle a large number of faxes, then use standalone POTS lines and fax machines. It is simple, reliable, and people are familiar with it. POTS is generally easy to troubleshoot, if the telco who provides the POTS service tells you it is an inside wiring issue or a fax machine issue, then chances are it is an inside wiring issue, PBX issue, handset issue, or fax machine issue. If you need a large number of fax numbers or need to handle a large number of faxes then you really should consider a PRI to back up your VoIP service -- use the PRI for large numbers of fax numbers pointing to app_fax, simple fax to PDF conversion scripts are on voip-info.org, e-mail it to a destination e-mail address. This is quite reliable, relatively easy to implement, uses well known, reasonably mature technology, and protocols. You can use something like NVFaxDetect or the built-in fax detection of DAHDI to do combined voice/fax telephone numbers. Enough people listen for the far end fax tone before pressing Send, iy can become an issue. TNs on PRIs are often very cheap compared to DIDs on VoIP, consider a dedicated fax TN for each person and avoid the hassle of fax detecting. There is a large community base and lots of documentation. If you are budgeting for a PRI then a POTS line is not going to be a large expense, might as well have one or two around when all else fails. T.38 is a fairly new protocol compared to POTS and PRI and even Asterisk and app_fax. The support community is much smaller, documentation is not as complete. You will likely need plenty of T.38 support from your carrier to get it working. If you need large numbers of fax numbers across a large area, or if you need fax numbers in places you have no presence , or any number of reasons, investigate T.38. Today T.38 seems to require a significant investment in research, trials, and failures compared to POTS or PRI fax. You need to decide if the advantages of T.38 are worth the investment in time. Others will have to comment on the option of Hylafax, IAXmodem, or BRI for fax. * The opinions above are my own. -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 3:38 PM, Sassy Natan sas...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I would like to make sure I got it right: 1. Asterisk 1.4 doesn't support FAX support. It do however works if u sent fax from the PSTN and have anther FAX machine answer to it even if it is behind asterisk. This works like any regular phone, and as far as I know this mode known as T.38 pass through. No its not T.38 pass through. T.38 pass through is only if the 2 end points negotiated T.38, i.e. a provider that supports T.38 and an ATA that supports T.38. What you are describing will most likely fail if there is any VoIP in between, and should succeed over pure TDM using digium or similar cards. 2. If u want asterisk 1.4 to able to sent and receive emails you will have to patch the source code using the spandsp patches. There are some other ways to make this work like using IAX, hylafax but I need to know if this is true. This mode is what know to be as NVFAX detected asterisk doesn't have the ability to send or receive emails. It does have the ability to use something like sendmail to send/receive emails. I'm assuming its a typo and you meant faxes. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? If you need to know something go ahead and try/test it and report back. After all that is what we all did to be able to answer it. Apparently the fact that others tried it and told you that it works still warrants a question:I need to know if this is true 3. Now version 1.6 support Fax in a better way then 1.4. There is app_fax.c in the source code. Can someone please tell me what does this apps do? I assume you meant than not then, but I'm not sure if its a typo, you might just not know. app_fax.c does faxing. The question is what are YOU trying to do? 4. Version 1.8 as two modes: SpanDSP mode and some other method, what is the different between then can someone please help? Whats the other mode? Thanks Sassy -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 5:21 PM, C F shma...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 3:38 PM, Sassy Natan sas...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I would like to make sure I got it right: 1. Asterisk 1.4 doesn't support FAX support. It do however works if u sent fax from the PSTN and have anther FAX machine answer to it even if it is behind asterisk. This works like any regular phone, and as far as I know this mode known as T.38 pass through. No its not T.38 pass through. T.38 pass through is only if the 2 end points negotiated T.38, i.e. a provider that supports T.38 and an ATA that supports T.38. What you are describing will most likely fail if there is any VoIP in between, and should succeed over pure TDM using digium or similar cards. Fax was never officially supported by Asterisk/Digium using TDM cards. I works for the most part, but there is no comparison to a pure POTS line. Much depends on the line quality, the sending and receiving fax devices. Some places with good fax machines, PRIs coming in and some FXS ports would work just fine. Others, are a nightmare and make you look bad. Depending on your customer's fax needs, sometimes it is better to tell them to keep or have some POTS lines provisioned for reliable faxing and to back that up, bring up being able to reach 911 if the phone system is down and the company's liability, even though everyone has cell phones. This is the best for TDM faxing with nothing fancy. I have sent people to www.trustfax.com TDM faxing is something that burned me more than once, so I don't suggest it. 2. If u want asterisk 1.4 to able to sent and receive emails you will have to patch the source code using the spandsp patches. There are some other ways to make this work like using IAX, hylafax but I need to know if this is true. This mode is what know to be as NVFAX detected asterisk doesn't have the ability to send or receive emails. It does have the ability to use something like sendmail to send/receive emails. I'm assuming its a typo and you meant faxes. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? If you need to know something go ahead and try/test it and report back. After all that is what we all did to be able to answer it. Apparently the fact that others tried it and told you that it works still warrants a question:I need to know if this is true I have been advised that everyone must post their solutions to the list so that you don't have to test. I think it was a self appointed list moderator. People are required to come back, aknowledge that something worked and give credit. Flaw: Just because something worked for someone doesn't mean that your solution wouldn't work better. Anyways, I am with you. I learned this stuff with very little documentation except .conf examples and code. Integration is where things get really fun and creative. Logically testing and failing and testing until you find your solution is extremely rewarding (at least to me). Making a Definity G3 and Asterisk fully integrate can cause severe rage followed by euphoria, so be warned. Being creative is dangerous to some on the list. Try iaxmodem and hylafax. Alex B did a very nice writeup on how to set that up so that it works very well. 3. Now version 1.6 support Fax in a better way then 1.4. There is app_fax.c in the source code. Can someone please tell me what does this apps do? I assume you meant than not then, but I'm not sure if its a typo, you might just not know. app_fax.c does faxing. The question is what are YOU trying to do? 4. Version 1.8 as two modes: SpanDSP mode and some other method, what is the different between then can someone please help? Whats the other mode? The best mode for T38 is probably Freeswitch or Callweaver. Thanks Sassy -- -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
Unless your network is under load and you are seeing dropped packets and high jitter, I would absolutely not do T.38. The cheapest and easiest approach that I have found is to buy yourself an FXS gateway and just make sure you are using ulaw. Is this for personal use, or for business use? One feature that you may want to utilize is fax tone detection if you only have a single incoming line. If you use fax tone detection you can send the call directly to your FXS gateway. I've successfully faxed through my SIP provider as well as through an FXO gateway going to a DOCSIS modem (consumer grade digital voice). TDM and POTS are really synonymous by the way, TDM is just a more specific acronym (time-division multiplexing). You need not worry about the details though, if you are simply doing inband passthrough and you are using 711u on your VOIP legs you should be fine... YMMV of course. -Ryan On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Steve Totaro stot...@totarotechnologies.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 5:21 PM, C F shma...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 3:38 PM, Sassy Natan sas...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I would like to make sure I got it right: 1. Asterisk 1.4 doesn't support FAX support. It do however works if u sent fax from the PSTN and have anther FAX machine answer to it even if it is behind asterisk. This works like any regular phone, and as far as I know this mode known as T.38 pass through. No its not T.38 pass through. T.38 pass through is only if the 2 end points negotiated T.38, i.e. a provider that supports T.38 and an ATA that supports T.38. What you are describing will most likely fail if there is any VoIP in between, and should succeed over pure TDM using digium or similar cards. Fax was never officially supported by Asterisk/Digium using TDM cards. I works for the most part, but there is no comparison to a pure POTS line. Much depends on the line quality, the sending and receiving fax devices. Some places with good fax machines, PRIs coming in and some FXS ports would work just fine. Others, are a nightmare and make you look bad. Depending on your customer's fax needs, sometimes it is better to tell them to keep or have some POTS lines provisioned for reliable faxing and to back that up, bring up being able to reach 911 if the phone system is down and the company's liability, even though everyone has cell phones. This is the best for TDM faxing with nothing fancy. I have sent people to www.trustfax.com TDM faxing is something that burned me more than once, so I don't suggest it. 2. If u want asterisk 1.4 to able to sent and receive emails you will have to patch the source code using the spandsp patches. There are some other ways to make this work like using IAX, hylafax but I need to know if this is true. This mode is what know to be as NVFAX detected asterisk doesn't have the ability to send or receive emails. It does have the ability to use something like sendmail to send/receive emails. I'm assuming its a typo and you meant faxes. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? If you need to know something go ahead and try/test it and report back. After all that is what we all did to be able to answer it. Apparently the fact that others tried it and told you that it works still warrants a question:I need to know if this is true I have been advised that everyone must post their solutions to the list so that you don't have to test. I think it was a self appointed list moderator. People are required to come back, aknowledge that something worked and give credit. Flaw: Just because something worked for someone doesn't mean that your solution wouldn't work better. Anyways, I am with you. I learned this stuff with very little documentation except .conf examples and code. Integration is where things get really fun and creative. Logically testing and failing and testing until you find your solution is extremely rewarding (at least to me). Making a Definity G3 and Asterisk fully integrate can cause severe rage followed by euphoria, so be warned. Being creative is dangerous to some on the list. Try iaxmodem and hylafax. Alex B did a very nice writeup on how to set that up so that it works very well. 3. Now version 1.6 support Fax in a better way then 1.4. There is app_fax.c in the source code. Can someone please tell me what does this apps do? I assume you meant than not then, but I'm not sure if its a typo, you might just not know. app_fax.c does faxing. The question is what are YOU trying to do? 4. Version 1.8 as two modes: SpanDSP mode and some other method, what is the different between then can someone please help? Whats the other mode? The best mode for T38 is probably Freeswitch or Callweaver. Thanks Sassy -- -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
Ok, Thanks But what is the NVFAX? Does 1.4 support getting faxes per extension? In my office I have 1000 ext, each users has it's own DID number. What I would like is that each user can get a fax using his own number. I'm running version 1.4.29 under Debian, and FreePBX under a sip trunk. It working great, no issues. But I can't get FAXs since the NVFAX option is gray out. I do not have a app_fax.so under the modules, and google it I saw you will need to patch the code of asterisk using the spandsp tool. There is also a stand alone version of this, where no patching is needed, but I still want to know what FAX options is supported under version 1.4. In 1.6 the app_fax.so comes by default, but I need to upgrade the server, which might be good idea, but I'm not sure I want to get into this now. Version 1.8 seems to have digum support and spandsp support for faxes, but I'm not sure what does it mean All I want is that each user has his own fax number, so when no answering, and voice mail is off (can I keep it on?), once fax is coming in, it will be converted to pdf and sent to the user mailbox. For sending faxes, I guess I can used sendmail with IAXmodem and some faxing server. Thank you all Sassy On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 1:15 AM, Ryan McGuire rdmcguir...@gmail.com wrote: Unless your network is under load and you are seeing dropped packets and high jitter, I would absolutely not do T.38. The cheapest and easiest approach that I have found is to buy yourself an FXS gateway and just make sure you are using ulaw. Is this for personal use, or for business use? One feature that you may want to utilize is fax tone detection if you only have a single incoming line. If you use fax tone detection you can send the call directly to your FXS gateway. I've successfully faxed through my SIP provider as well as through an FXO gateway going to a DOCSIS modem (consumer grade digital voice). TDM and POTS are really synonymous by the way, TDM is just a more specific acronym (time-division multiplexing). You need not worry about the details though, if you are simply doing inband passthrough and you are using 711u on your VOIP legs you should be fine... YMMV of course. -Ryan On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Steve Totaro stot...@totarotechnologies.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 5:21 PM, C F shma...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 3:38 PM, Sassy Natan sas...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I would like to make sure I got it right: 1. Asterisk 1.4 doesn't support FAX support. It do however works if u sent fax from the PSTN and have anther FAX machine answer to it even if it is behind asterisk. This works like any regular phone, and as far as I know this mode known as T.38 pass through. No its not T.38 pass through. T.38 pass through is only if the 2 end points negotiated T.38, i.e. a provider that supports T.38 and an ATA that supports T.38. What you are describing will most likely fail if there is any VoIP in between, and should succeed over pure TDM using digium or similar cards. Fax was never officially supported by Asterisk/Digium using TDM cards. I works for the most part, but there is no comparison to a pure POTS line. Much depends on the line quality, the sending and receiving fax devices. Some places with good fax machines, PRIs coming in and some FXS ports would work just fine. Others, are a nightmare and make you look bad. Depending on your customer's fax needs, sometimes it is better to tell them to keep or have some POTS lines provisioned for reliable faxing and to back that up, bring up being able to reach 911 if the phone system is down and the company's liability, even though everyone has cell phones. This is the best for TDM faxing with nothing fancy. I have sent people to www.trustfax.com TDM faxing is something that burned me more than once, so I don't suggest it. 2. If u want asterisk 1.4 to able to sent and receive emails you will have to patch the source code using the spandsp patches. There are some other ways to make this work like using IAX, hylafax but I need to know if this is true. This mode is what know to be as NVFAX detected asterisk doesn't have the ability to send or receive emails. It does have the ability to use something like sendmail to send/receive emails. I'm assuming its a typo and you meant faxes. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? If you need to know something go ahead and try/test it and report back. After all that is what we all did to be able to answer it. Apparently the fact that others tried it and told you that it works still warrants a question:I need to know if this is true I have been advised that everyone must post their solutions to the list so that you don't have to test. I think it was a self appointed list moderator. People are required to come back, aknowledge that something worked and give credit.
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
On 08/10/2011 12:00 AM, Steve Totaro wrote: Try iaxmodem and hylafax. Alex B did a very nice writeup on how to set that up so that it works very well. Could not agree more. I have been using a box with an Eicon Diva Server card, asterisk 1.4, chan_capi, iaxmodem hylafax for many years and it has worked flawlessly. From a laptop in the field I can send a fax (via a VPN) straight from OpenOffice and receive faxes via email. Regards, Patrick -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
Ryan McGuire wrote: Unless your network is under load and you are seeing dropped packets and high jitter, I would absolutely not do T.38. The cheapest and easiest approach that I have found is to buy yourself an FXS gateway and just make sure you are using ulaw. As SIP is usually running over UDP/IP it doesn't take much to produce dropped packets. Dropped packets mean lost audio which means lost data and possible demodulation difficulties for the modems. If you're in an environment where dropped UDP packets don't occur you're in a very rare scenario. For the most part people who claim success when faxing over SIP G.711 are being rescued by ECM (error correction) within the fax protocol. There are very, very few who really have mitigated UDP packet loss. That said, all T.38 systems are not equal. Certainly, the reliability of your T.38 provider may not be any better than that of G.711 fax over the SIP UDP. I only recommend faxing over TDM everything else is at your own risk. Thanks, Lee. -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 6:35 PM, Sassy Natan sas...@gmail.com wrote: Ok, Thanks But what is the NVFAX? Does 1.4 support getting faxes per extension? In my office I have 1000 ext, each users has it's own DID number. DIDs are cheap, get 1000 extra DIDs specific to that user's fax. It is classy to have your own fax, more secure which was my angle, no TS documents sitting on a FAX machine. You can use the same number why? Probably only a fraction would need their own fax anyways. What I would like is that each user can get a fax using his own number. I'm running version 1.4.29 under Debian, and FreePBX under a sip trunk. It working great, no issues. But I can't get FAXs since the NVFAX option is gray out. Grayed out means dependency issues, resolve them and recompile. I do not have a app_fax.so under the modules, and google it I saw you will need to patch the code of asterisk using the spandsp tool. There is also a stand alone version of this, where no patching is needed, but I still want to know what FAX options is supported under version 1.4. In 1.6 the app_fax.so comes by default, but I need to upgrade the server, which might be good idea, but I'm not sure I want to get into this now. Version 1.8 seems to have digum support and spandsp support for faxes, but I'm not sure what does it mean HylaFax and faxdetect. You for the number of phones you are talking about, I would use eth2 to connect directly to your Hylafax server using IAXModem. All I want is that each user has his own fax number, so when no answering, and voice mail is off (can I keep it on?), once fax is coming in, it will be converted to pdf and sent to the user mailbox. For sending faxes, I guess I can used sendmail with IAXmodem and some faxing server. Thank you all Sassy On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 1:15 AM, Ryan McGuire rdmcguir...@gmail.com wrote: Unless your network is under load and you are seeing dropped packets and high jitter, I would absolutely not do T.38. The cheapest and easiest approach that I have found is to buy yourself an FXS gateway and just make sure you are using ulaw. Is this for personal use, or for business use? One feature that you may want to utilize is fax tone detection if you only have a single incoming line. If you use fax tone detection you can send the call directly to your FXS gateway. I've successfully faxed through my SIP provider as well as through an FXO gateway going to a DOCSIS modem (consumer grade digital voice). TDM and POTS are really synonymous by the way, TDM is just a more specific acronym (time-division multiplexing). You need not worry about the details though, if you are simply doing inband passthrough and you are using 711u on your VOIP legs you should be fine... YMMV of course. -Ryan On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Steve Totaro stot...@totarotechnologies.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 5:21 PM, C F shma...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 3:38 PM, Sassy Natan sas...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I would like to make sure I got it right: 1. Asterisk 1.4 doesn't support FAX support. It do however works if u sent fax from the PSTN and have anther FAX machine answer to it even if it is behind asterisk. This works like any regular phone, and as far as I know this mode known as T.38 pass through. No its not T.38 pass through. T.38 pass through is only if the 2 end points negotiated T.38, i.e. a provider that supports T.38 and an ATA that supports T.38. What you are describing will most likely fail if there is any VoIP in between, and should succeed over pure TDM using digium or similar cards. Fax was never officially supported by Asterisk/Digium using TDM cards. I works for the most part, but there is no comparison to a pure POTS line. Much depends on the line quality, the sending and receiving fax devices. Some places with good fax machines, PRIs coming in and some FXS ports would work just fine. Others, are a nightmare and make you look bad. Depending on your customer's fax needs, sometimes it is better to tell them to keep or have some POTS lines provisioned for reliable faxing and to back that up, bring up being able to reach 911 if the phone system is down and the company's liability, even though everyone has cell phones. This is the best for TDM faxing with nothing fancy. I have sent people to www.trustfax.com TDM faxing is something that burned me more than once, so I don't suggest it. 2. If u want asterisk 1.4 to able to sent and receive emails you will have to patch the source code using the spandsp patches. There are some other ways to make this work like using IAX, hylafax but I need to know if this is true. This mode is what know to be as NVFAX detected asterisk doesn't have the ability to send or receive emails. It does have the ability to use something like sendmail to send/receive emails. I'm assuming its a typo and
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Lee Howard fax...@howardsilvan.com wrote: Ryan McGuire wrote: Unless your network is under load and you are seeing dropped packets and high jitter, I would absolutely not do T.38. The cheapest and easiest approach that I have found is to buy yourself an FXS gateway and just make sure you are using ulaw. As SIP is usually running over UDP/IP it doesn't take much to produce dropped packets. Dropped packets mean lost audio which means lost data and possible demodulation difficulties for the modems. If you're in an environment where dropped UDP packets don't occur you're in a very rare scenario. I suppose you are talking about from the provider and not on the LAN? At Equinix in Ashburn VA, I have never had a dropped packet via the crossconnect from our cage to Level3's cage. Sub ms pings. Putting the primary PBX in Equinix and a 100meg speed for all VoIP calls in our out. 100meg DIA and 100meg layer 2 fiber to corporate. Works like a charm. For the most part people who claim success when faxing over SIP G.711 are being rescued by ECM (error correction) within the fax protocol. There are very, very few who really have mitigated UDP packet loss. That said, all T.38 systems are not equal. Certainly, the reliability of your T.38 provider may not be any better than that of G.711 fax over the SIP UDP. I only recommend faxing over TDM everything else is at your own risk. All faxing in Asterisk is at your own risk. It is not reliable. Thanks, Lee. -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 6:15 PM, Ryan McGuire rdmcguir...@gmail.com wrote: Unless your network is under load and you are seeing dropped packets and high jitter, I would absolutely not do T.38. The cheapest and easiest approach that I have found is to buy yourself an FXS gateway and just make sure you are using ulaw. SLIN and Alaw work just fine. Again, where are we referring to, the SIP provider or the LAN, something you can control or not? If faxing is not important then any solution is fine. Is this for personal use, or for business use? One feature that you may want to utilize is fax tone detection if you only have a single incoming line. If you use fax tone detection you can send the call directly to your FXS gateway. Asterisk has this built in. I've successfully faxed through my SIP provider as well as through an FXO gateway going to a DOCSIS modem (consumer grade digital voice). Do you mean a cable modem? They love to use Digital Voice when it is just VoIP. TDM and POTS are really synonymous by the way, TDM is just a more specific acronym (time-division multiplexing). POTS is not use TDM. A T1 would use TDM to MUX 23(4) calls onto a two pair. POTS is a single pair and comes off some sort of TDM mux device somewhere. You need not worry about the details though, if you are simply doing inband passthrough and you are using 711u on your VOIP legs you should be fine... YMMV of course. I would never suggest this in a million years without T38 that isn't borken. -Ryan On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Steve Totaro stot...@totarotechnologies.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 5:21 PM, C F shma...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 3:38 PM, Sassy Natan sas...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I would like to make sure I got it right: 1. Asterisk 1.4 doesn't support FAX support. It do however works if u sent fax from the PSTN and have anther FAX machine answer to it even if it is behind asterisk. This works like any regular phone, and as far as I know this mode known as T.38 pass through. No its not T.38 pass through. T.38 pass through is only if the 2 end points negotiated T.38, i.e. a provider that supports T.38 and an ATA that supports T.38. What you are describing will most likely fail if there is any VoIP in between, and should succeed over pure TDM using digium or similar cards. Fax was never officially supported by Asterisk/Digium using TDM cards. I works for the most part, but there is no comparison to a pure POTS line. Much depends on the line quality, the sending and receiving fax devices. Some places with good fax machines, PRIs coming in and some FXS ports would work just fine. Others, are a nightmare and make you look bad. Depending on your customer's fax needs, sometimes it is better to tell them to keep or have some POTS lines provisioned for reliable faxing and to back that up, bring up being able to reach 911 if the phone system is down and the company's liability, even though everyone has cell phones. This is the best for TDM faxing with nothing fancy. I have sent people to www.trustfax.com TDM faxing is something that burned me more than once, so I don't suggest it. 2. If u want asterisk 1.4 to able to sent and receive emails you will have to patch the source code using the spandsp patches. There are some other ways to make this work like using IAX, hylafax but I need to know if this is true. This mode is what know to be as NVFAX detected asterisk doesn't have the ability to send or receive emails. It does have the ability to use something like sendmail to send/receive emails. I'm assuming its a typo and you meant faxes. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? If you need to know something go ahead and try/test it and report back. After all that is what we all did to be able to answer it. Apparently the fact that others tried it and told you that it works still warrants a question:I need to know if this is true I have been advised that everyone must post their solutions to the list so that you don't have to test. I think it was a self appointed list moderator. People are required to come back, aknowledge that something worked and give credit. Flaw: Just because something worked for someone doesn't mean that your solution wouldn't work better. Anyways, I am with you. I learned this stuff with very little documentation except .conf examples and code. Integration is where things get really fun and creative. Logically testing and failing and testing until you find your solution is extremely rewarding (at least to me). Making a Definity G3 and Asterisk fully integrate can cause severe rage followed by euphoria, so be warned. Being creative is dangerous to some on the list. Try iaxmodem and hylafax. Alex B did a very nice writeup on how to set that up so that it works very well. 3. Now version 1.6 support Fax in a better way then 1.4. There is app_fax.c in the source code. Can someone
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 8:13 PM, Steve Totaro stot...@asteriskhelpdesk.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 6:15 PM, Ryan McGuire rdmcguir...@gmail.com wrote: Unless your network is under load and you are seeing dropped packets and high jitter, I would absolutely not do T.38. The cheapest and easiest approach that I have found is to buy yourself an FXS gateway and just make sure you are using ulaw. SLIN and Alaw work just fine. Again, where are we referring to, the SIP provider or the LAN, something you can control or not? If faxing is not important then any solution is fine. Is this for personal use, or for business use? One feature that you may want to utilize is fax tone detection if you only have a single incoming line. If you use fax tone detection you can send the call directly to your FXS gateway. Asterisk has this built in. I've successfully faxed through my SIP provider as well as through an FXO gateway going to a DOCSIS modem (consumer grade digital voice). Do you mean a cable modem? They love to use Digital Voice when it is just VoIP. TDM and POTS are really synonymous by the way, TDM is just a more specific acronym (time-division multiplexing). POTS is not use TDM. A T1 would use TDM to MUX 23(4) calls onto a two pair. POTS is a single pair and comes off some sort of TDM mux device somewhere. That came out wrong, POTS and TDM are not synonymous. TDM allows multiple simultaneious calls over the same copper. You can get call waiting on POTS but that is about it. -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
Steve Totaro wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Lee Howard fax...@howardsilvan.com wrote: Ryan McGuire wrote: Unless your network is under load and you are seeing dropped packets and high jitter, I would absolutely not do T.38. The cheapest and easiest approach that I have found is to buy yourself an FXS gateway and just make sure you are using ulaw. As SIP is usually running over UDP/IP it doesn't take much to produce dropped packets. Dropped packets mean lost audio which means lost data and possible demodulation difficulties for the modems. If you're in an environment where dropped UDP packets don't occur you're in a very rare scenario. I suppose you are talking about from the provider and not on the LAN? You certainly can (and usually will) have UDP packet loss on an uncontrolled LAN. At Equinix in Ashburn VA, I have never had a dropped packet via the crossconnect from our cage to Level3's cage. Sub ms pings. Putting the primary PBX in Equinix and a 100meg speed for all VoIP calls in our out. 100meg DIA and 100meg layer 2 fiber to corporate. I have no reason to doubt your claims, but if this is true, then your arrangement there clearly mitigates the likelihood of UDP packet loss. Nevertheless, this arrangement is not something that the typical user who asks how do I fax over SIP/VoIP is going to have. Without being very clear about the environment and explaining the pitfalls of not following your example exactly, you're not doing them any favors by encouraging them to attempt it in their environment. For every one user who I've ever heard from saying that they have reliable G.711 faxing over their SIP channels I've heard from a dozen who don't. Thanks, Lee. -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Lee Howard fax...@howardsilvan.com wrote: Steve Totaro wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Lee Howard fax...@howardsilvan.com wrote: Ryan McGuire wrote: Unless your network is under load and you are seeing dropped packets and high jitter, I would absolutely not do T.38. The cheapest and easiest approach that I have found is to buy yourself an FXS gateway and just make sure you are using ulaw. As SIP is usually running over UDP/IP it doesn't take much to produce dropped packets. Dropped packets mean lost audio which means lost data and possible demodulation difficulties for the modems. If you're in an environment where dropped UDP packets don't occur you're in a very rare scenario. I suppose you are talking about from the provider and not on the LAN? You certainly can (and usually will) have UDP packet loss on an uncontrolled LAN. Then you should be fired for not controlling your LAN. At Equinix in Ashburn VA, I have never had a dropped packet via the crossconnect from our cage to Level3's cage. Sub ms pings. Putting the primary PBX in Equinix and a 100meg speed for all VoIP calls in our out. 100meg DIA and 100meg layer 2 fiber to corporate. I have no reason to doubt your claims, but if this is true, then your arrangement there clearly mitigates the likelihood of UDP packet loss. Nevertheless, this arrangement is not something that the typical user who asks how do I fax over SIP/VoIP is going to have. Without being very clear about the environment and explaining the pitfalls of not following your example exactly, you're not doing them any favors by encouraging them to attempt it in their environment. I don't care what you doubt or not. I engineered it, Got the contracts signed, provisioned, setup BGP, got all that cleared with the steering committee. I do not assume anything about anyone and cannot define a typical user. That is making as ass out of you and me. I encourage everyone to attempt and test everything! Not put it in production without some reasonable testing. For every one user who I've ever heard from saying that they have reliable G.711 faxing over their SIP channels I've heard from a dozen who don't. Roger That. That is why I advise clients it is not the best way to go. Thanks, Lee. He came in giving no details about his setup. Now I see it is 1000 phones. I guess you don't care to read threads, and like to jump in the middle not knowing what you are talking about. I said that there is really no good way to handle faxes with Asterisk except with a T1, IAXmodem, and Hylafax. I bought fax for Asterisk when migrating to an all SIP world and it was a dismal failure and Digium didn't even have anyone that could explain any of the stats or problems I had. I paid for it so I didn't have to screw around and finally I just took a refund and a big dent as far as the companies opinion of me. I wanted to try the 1.2 asterisk fork and that other project that came from the fact that Asterisk has deadlock issues and a whole cross platform rewrite has been done. Thanks, Steve Totaro -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Steve Totaro stot...@totarotechnologies.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 5:21 PM, C F shma...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 3:38 PM, Sassy Natan sas...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I would like to make sure I got it right: 1. Asterisk 1.4 doesn't support FAX support. It do however works if u sent fax from the PSTN and have anther FAX machine answer to it even if it is behind asterisk. This works like any regular phone, and as far as I know this mode known as T.38 pass through. No its not T.38 pass through. T.38 pass through is only if the 2 end points negotiated T.38, i.e. a provider that supports T.38 and an ATA that supports T.38. What you are describing will most likely fail if there is any VoIP in between, and should succeed over pure TDM using digium or similar cards. Fax was never officially supported by Asterisk/Digium using TDM cards. I works for the most part, but there is no comparison to a pure POTS line. Much depends on the line quality, the sending and receiving fax devices. Some places with good fax machines, PRIs coming in and some FXS ports would work just fine. Others, are a nightmare and make you look bad. Depending on your customer's fax needs, sometimes it is better to tell them to keep or have some POTS lines provisioned for reliable faxing and to back that up, bring up being able to reach 911 if the phone system is down and the company's liability, even though everyone has cell phones. This is the best for TDM faxing with nothing fancy. I have sent people to www.trustfax.com TDM faxing is something that burned me more than once, so I don't suggest it. 2. If u want asterisk 1.4 to able to sent and receive emails you will have to patch the source code using the spandsp patches. There are some other ways to make this work like using IAX, hylafax but I need to know if this is true. This mode is what know to be as NVFAX detected asterisk doesn't have the ability to send or receive emails. It does have the ability to use something like sendmail to send/receive emails. I'm assuming its a typo and you meant faxes. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? If you need to know something go ahead and try/test it and report back. After all that is what we all did to be able to answer it. Apparently the fact that others tried it and told you that it works still warrants a question:I need to know if this is true I have been advised that everyone must post their solutions to the list so that you don't have to test. I think it was a self appointed list moderator. People are required to come back, aknowledge that something worked and give credit. Flaw: Just because something worked for someone doesn't mean that your solution wouldn't work better. Anyways, I am with you. I learned this stuff with very little documentation except .conf examples and code. Integration is where things get really fun and creative. Logically testing and failing and testing until you find your solution is extremely rewarding (at least to me). Making a Definity G3 and Asterisk fully integrate can cause severe rage followed by euphoria, so be warned. Being creative is dangerous to some on the list. Wow, I cant believe that someone else on this list is admitting to the orgasm integrating a Definity with asterisk can give one. But it takes so much foreplay and believe me its worth it. :) Try iaxmodem and hylafax. Alex B did a very nice writeup on how to set that up so that it works very well. 3. Now version 1.6 support Fax in a better way then 1.4. There is app_fax.c in the source code. Can someone please tell me what does this apps do? I assume you meant than not then, but I'm not sure if its a typo, you might just not know. app_fax.c does faxing. The question is what are YOU trying to do? 4. Version 1.8 as two modes: SpanDSP mode and some other method, what is the different between then can someone please help? Whats the other mode? The best mode for T38 is probably Freeswitch or Callweaver. Thanks Sassy -- -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
Guys in my opinion this thread has been very productive. Which proves one thing, as many people you are going to ask about faxing with asterisk that many opinions you are going to get (maybe even add +1 opinions :P). In the end it depends on your experience, hence I asked the OP to try for himself. Faxing is one of those things that for everyone something else works. What works for you might and might not work for someone else. To sum it up: 1. Faxing doesn't like lost packets. 2. That said, T.38 could work 3. Pure TDM (and by that I don't mean the literal definition of TDM but POTS as well) is still the best. 4. Running that TDM thru asterisk is again open to different experiences among users. 5. Using Asterisk as a fax endpoint (hylafax, app_fax take your pick) should work in most cases if the handoff to asterisk is TDM and could work if it's T.38 On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 9:28 PM, Steve Totaro stot...@asteriskhelpdesk.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Lee Howard fax...@howardsilvan.com wrote: Steve Totaro wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Lee Howard fax...@howardsilvan.com wrote: Ryan McGuire wrote: Unless your network is under load and you are seeing dropped packets and high jitter, I would absolutely not do T.38. The cheapest and easiest approach that I have found is to buy yourself an FXS gateway and just make sure you are using ulaw. As SIP is usually running over UDP/IP it doesn't take much to produce dropped packets. Dropped packets mean lost audio which means lost data and possible demodulation difficulties for the modems. If you're in an environment where dropped UDP packets don't occur you're in a very rare scenario. I suppose you are talking about from the provider and not on the LAN? You certainly can (and usually will) have UDP packet loss on an uncontrolled LAN. Then you should be fired for not controlling your LAN. At Equinix in Ashburn VA, I have never had a dropped packet via the crossconnect from our cage to Level3's cage. Sub ms pings. Putting the primary PBX in Equinix and a 100meg speed for all VoIP calls in our out. 100meg DIA and 100meg layer 2 fiber to corporate. I have no reason to doubt your claims, but if this is true, then your arrangement there clearly mitigates the likelihood of UDP packet loss. Nevertheless, this arrangement is not something that the typical user who asks how do I fax over SIP/VoIP is going to have. Without being very clear about the environment and explaining the pitfalls of not following your example exactly, you're not doing them any favors by encouraging them to attempt it in their environment. I don't care what you doubt or not. I engineered it, Got the contracts signed, provisioned, setup BGP, got all that cleared with the steering committee. I do not assume anything about anyone and cannot define a typical user. That is making as ass out of you and me. I encourage everyone to attempt and test everything! Not put it in production without some reasonable testing. For every one user who I've ever heard from saying that they have reliable G.711 faxing over their SIP channels I've heard from a dozen who don't. Roger That. That is why I advise clients it is not the best way to go. Thanks, Lee. He came in giving no details about his setup. Now I see it is 1000 phones. I guess you don't care to read threads, and like to jump in the middle not knowing what you are talking about. I said that there is really no good way to handle faxes with Asterisk except with a T1, IAXmodem, and Hylafax. I bought fax for Asterisk when migrating to an all SIP world and it was a dismal failure and Digium didn't even have anyone that could explain any of the stats or problems I had. I paid for it so I didn't have to screw around and finally I just took a refund and a big dent as far as the companies opinion of me. I wanted to try the 1.2 asterisk fork and that other project that came from the fact that Asterisk has deadlock issues and a whole cross platform rewrite has been done. Thanks, Steve Totaro -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
I do love this stuff. Being self taught, Asterisk actually made me learn LAMP from the command line. I was a pure Windows and Cisco guy, all self taught since the VIC20 and Commodore 64, I taught myself BASIC. Anyways, just like anything you need to define the job before you attempt to choose the proper tool(s). Just a quick correction to number 5, Hylafax is a very powerful fax app, IAXmodem is just a bit of glue. It has error correction and other features that help in TX/RX faxes successfully. Asterisk is not the endpoint. It has been in dev since the early 90s, starting with SGI and their IRIX servers. (I love SGI and the Cray Numalink) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HylaFAX On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 10:31 PM, C F shma...@gmail.com wrote: Guys in my opinion this thread has been very productive. Which proves one thing, as many people you are going to ask about faxing with asterisk that many opinions you are going to get (maybe even add +1 opinions :P). In the end it depends on your experience, hence I asked the OP to try for himself. Faxing is one of those things that for everyone something else works. What works for you might and might not work for someone else. To sum it up: 1. Faxing doesn't like lost packets. 2. That said, T.38 could work 3. Pure TDM (and by that I don't mean the literal definition of TDM but POTS as well) is still the best. 4. Running that TDM thru asterisk is again open to different experiences among users. 5. Using Asterisk as a fax endpoint (hylafax, app_fax take your pick) should work in most cases if the handoff to asterisk is TDM and could work if it's T.38 On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 9:28 PM, Steve Totaro stot...@asteriskhelpdesk.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Lee Howard fax...@howardsilvan.com wrote: Steve Totaro wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Lee Howard fax...@howardsilvan.com wrote: Ryan McGuire wrote: Unless your network is under load and you are seeing dropped packets and high jitter, I would absolutely not do T.38. The cheapest and easiest approach that I have found is to buy yourself an FXS gateway and just make sure you are using ulaw. As SIP is usually running over UDP/IP it doesn't take much to produce dropped packets. Dropped packets mean lost audio which means lost data and possible demodulation difficulties for the modems. If you're in an environment where dropped UDP packets don't occur you're in a very rare scenario. I suppose you are talking about from the provider and not on the LAN? You certainly can (and usually will) have UDP packet loss on an uncontrolled LAN. Then you should be fired for not controlling your LAN. At Equinix in Ashburn VA, I have never had a dropped packet via the crossconnect from our cage to Level3's cage. Sub ms pings. Putting the primary PBX in Equinix and a 100meg speed for all VoIP calls in our out. 100meg DIA and 100meg layer 2 fiber to corporate. I have no reason to doubt your claims, but if this is true, then your arrangement there clearly mitigates the likelihood of UDP packet loss. Nevertheless, this arrangement is not something that the typical user who asks how do I fax over SIP/VoIP is going to have. Without being very clear about the environment and explaining the pitfalls of not following your example exactly, you're not doing them any favors by encouraging them to attempt it in their environment. I don't care what you doubt or not. I engineered it, Got the contracts signed, provisioned, setup BGP, got all that cleared with the steering committee. I do not assume anything about anyone and cannot define a typical user. That is making as ass out of you and me. I encourage everyone to attempt and test everything! Not put it in production without some reasonable testing. For every one user who I've ever heard from saying that they have reliable G.711 faxing over their SIP channels I've heard from a dozen who don't. Roger That. That is why I advise clients it is not the best way to go. Thanks, Lee. He came in giving no details about his setup. Now I see it is 1000 phones. I guess you don't care to read threads, and like to jump in the middle not knowing what you are talking about. I said that there is really no good way to handle faxes with Asterisk except with a T1, IAXmodem, and Hylafax. I bought fax for Asterisk when migrating to an all SIP world and it was a dismal failure and Digium didn't even have anyone that could explain any of the stats or problems I had. I paid for it so I didn't have to screw around and finally I just took a refund and a big dent as far as the companies opinion of me. I wanted to try the 1.2 asterisk fork and that other project that came from the fact that Asterisk has deadlock issues and a whole cross platform rewrite has been done. Thanks, Steve Totaro -- _ -- Bandwidth and Colocation
Re: [asterisk-users] FAX Issues
Off topic but cool tech. One of the defunct Asterisk Appliance's was based on the Altix 350. http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/altix/numalink.html On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 12:12 AM, Steve Totaro stot...@totarotechnologies.com wrote: I do love this stuff. Being self taught, Asterisk actually made me learn LAMP from the command line. I was a pure Windows and Cisco guy, all self taught since the VIC20 and Commodore 64, I taught myself BASIC. Anyways, just like anything you need to define the job before you attempt to choose the proper tool(s). Just a quick correction to number 5, Hylafax is a very powerful fax app, IAXmodem is just a bit of glue. It has error correction and other features that help in TX/RX faxes successfully. Asterisk is not the endpoint. It has been in dev since the early 90s, starting with SGI and their IRIX servers. (I love SGI and the Cray Numalink) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HylaFAX On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 10:31 PM, C F shma...@gmail.com wrote: Guys in my opinion this thread has been very productive. Which proves one thing, as many people you are going to ask about faxing with asterisk that many opinions you are going to get (maybe even add +1 opinions :P). In the end it depends on your experience, hence I asked the OP to try for himself. Faxing is one of those things that for everyone something else works. What works for you might and might not work for someone else. To sum it up: 1. Faxing doesn't like lost packets. 2. That said, T.38 could work 3. Pure TDM (and by that I don't mean the literal definition of TDM but POTS as well) is still the best. 4. Running that TDM thru asterisk is again open to different experiences among users. 5. Using Asterisk as a fax endpoint (hylafax, app_fax take your pick) should work in most cases if the handoff to asterisk is TDM and could work if it's T.38 On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 9:28 PM, Steve Totaro stot...@asteriskhelpdesk.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Lee Howard fax...@howardsilvan.com wrote: Steve Totaro wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Lee Howard fax...@howardsilvan.com wrote: Ryan McGuire wrote: Unless your network is under load and you are seeing dropped packets and high jitter, I would absolutely not do T.38. The cheapest and easiest approach that I have found is to buy yourself an FXS gateway and just make sure you are using ulaw. As SIP is usually running over UDP/IP it doesn't take much to produce dropped packets. Dropped packets mean lost audio which means lost data and possible demodulation difficulties for the modems. If you're in an environment where dropped UDP packets don't occur you're in a very rare scenario. I suppose you are talking about from the provider and not on the LAN? You certainly can (and usually will) have UDP packet loss on an uncontrolled LAN. Then you should be fired for not controlling your LAN. At Equinix in Ashburn VA, I have never had a dropped packet via the crossconnect from our cage to Level3's cage. Sub ms pings. Putting the primary PBX in Equinix and a 100meg speed for all VoIP calls in our out. 100meg DIA and 100meg layer 2 fiber to corporate. I have no reason to doubt your claims, but if this is true, then your arrangement there clearly mitigates the likelihood of UDP packet loss. Nevertheless, this arrangement is not something that the typical user who asks how do I fax over SIP/VoIP is going to have. Without being very clear about the environment and explaining the pitfalls of not following your example exactly, you're not doing them any favors by encouraging them to attempt it in their environment. I don't care what you doubt or not. I engineered it, Got the contracts signed, provisioned, setup BGP, got all that cleared with the steering committee. I do not assume anything about anyone and cannot define a typical user. That is making as ass out of you and me. I encourage everyone to attempt and test everything! Not put it in production without some reasonable testing. For every one user who I've ever heard from saying that they have reliable G.711 faxing over their SIP channels I've heard from a dozen who don't. Roger That. That is why I advise clients it is not the best way to go. Thanks, Lee. He came in giving no details about his setup. Now I see it is 1000 phones. I guess you don't care to read threads, and like to jump in the middle not knowing what you are talking about. I said that there is really no good way to handle faxes with Asterisk except with a T1, IAXmodem, and Hylafax. I bought fax for Asterisk when migrating to an all SIP world and it was a dismal failure and Digium didn't even have anyone that could explain any of the stats or problems I had. I paid for it so I didn't have to screw around and finally I just took a refund and a big dent as far as the companies opinion of me. I wanted to try the 1.2 asterisk fork and that
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Fax Issues
On Mon, 2005-08-15 at 12:40 -0700, Matt wrote: I have a user who has a fax machine plugged into an ATA. They are able to SEND faxes just fine. Faxes go through wonderfully. However, when someone tries to send them a fax, their fax machine never receives it. And eventually the sending machine just errors out. Any thoughts? Need more info! Is the fax plugged to dedicated port on ATA. What kind of ATA is it? Use NVBackgroundDetect works OK. -- #Joseph ___ Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
