Fax over IP Providers

Retail or wholesale?

Generally speaking, fax over IP is unreliable unless the T.38 protocol is supported (by _both_ sides). The list at

represents an attempt to track T.38 support by PSTN termination providers, and is the best source I can point you to. On your side, you'll need an suitable ATA: the Linksys SPA-2102 (two ports) and the GrandStream HT386 (one port) are said to support T.38, but I've never tested this feature. Anyway, here's a supplier for both such devices that I have found reliable and inexpensive (also for non-US shipments):

Enzo

I've sent faxes at 9600 baud with ViaTalk.

Thanks,

Thomas See review at

hello, i would like to know if there are Fax over ip providers, and where I

Thanks for your help, Im going to check now

>

so could you send many fax at the same time? or does it work like a conventional fax?what is the difference? Thanks

escribió en el mensaje news: snipped-for-privacy@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...

I would be more interested on wholesale providers... Ive checked the links and Ive checked the ATA systems.. I understand that they digitise the fax signal. But I was thinking on something more like skype.. But maybe Im dreaming too much... If I have an Broadband line in my house, and 3 computers connected to internet.They could be making 3 skype phone calls, but could they be sending

3 fax at the same time? WOuld this Fax over IP system be faster?, or send various at the same time? Thanks for your time

"Enzo Michelangeli" escribió en el mensaje news:451a85fb$1@127.0.0.1...

Yes, and that's quite silly if you think about it, because the modem inside the fax machine works hard to convert the digitally encoded data to analog form...

An ATA can provide one or more ports equivalent to telephone lines ("FXS ports") to which you may connect telephone sets; and/or one or more ports equivalent to telephone sets ("FXO ports") that can be connected to a telephone line.

If you just want to send picture from a PC to another PC, all you need is a scanner producing an image file that you will then send in one of many possible ways: for example, e-mail or Skype-based file transfer. The problems begin when you want to send your pictures to actual fax machines connected to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network).

Well, IP is a packetized protocol, so you can share the bandwidth among multiple independent sessions.

Yes, but more often than not you can't just attach your fax machine(s) to FXS ports of an ATA registered to the server of some PSTN termination provider, even using uncompressing codecs such as G.711, because the fax protocol is very sensitive to latency (propagation delay) and especially jitter (random fluctuations of the latency), which on the other hand are well tolerated by the human ear. The result is that connections that "sound good" to a human may sometimes work for fax transmission, and sometimes not... That's why several other mechanisms have been devised to send fax messages over IP, ranging from store-and-forward systems such as email-to-fax gateways (check out the free service by

) to the T.38 protocol for realtime fax transmission.

My impression is that not much effort is currently spent on fax-over-IP because, in the age of Internet, fax technology is increasingly perceived as a barbarous relic of the past...

Cheers --

Enzo

Thanks for all your answers, I agree that fax will disappear soon...so I understand that they dont put effort on it. So regarding all these companies send2fax or jblast ... etc... how can they send all these big amount of fax so quick? I was convinced that they would do it over ip..

Laura

"Enzo Michelangeli" escribió en el mensaje news:451b9d5b$1@127.0.0.1...

They probably have a bunch of fax/modems connected to the PSTN, or even a few of them operated sequentially (the broadcast doesn't need to be realtime). After all, even if they did it over IP, the IP-to-PSTN termination provider would need conventional (i.e., TDM or analog) PSTN ports in order to call standard fax machines...

Enzo

thanks Enzo for your help Laura "Enzo Michelangeli" escribió en el mensaje news:451bb93e$1@127.0.0.1...

Yes, FAX can be used over VoIP. However, you must get a list of compatible FAX machines from your VoIP provider as not all FAX machines work with all VoIP services (because of combinations of compression).

Laura,

I used my regular fax, an HP All-in-One printer/scanner/fax. It only sends one fax at a time. it does tie up the phone line though, which in my case is VoIP (ViaTalk). They also sell a second line as fax, though I don't know what the technical difference is.

I looked into fax services, too, where I would email the document to a certain address, but I don't send faxes often enough to make it worth while, most people have email. Some, though, like Doctor's offices and health insurance only accept faxes, so when I need to send a fax I really need it, but I could compromise on the speed. 9600 baud is somewhat slow, but if you don't send 50 page documents it's good enough.

I'll check what the baud rate would be on the second line.

Thanks,

Thomas

so could you send many fax at the same time? or does it work like a

I use mypeople VOIP service

and have brother MFC 420 CN. The faxes work fine.