John, Would you be willing to share the ATA that you are having success with? We always obtained results that were "okay", but nothing that was reliable enough for something like a medical clinic that sends a hundred faxes a day. Granted this may have a lot to do with the provider, but I'm still curious as to what you've had success with.
Thanks! Alexander On Wed Nov 05 2014 at 2:48:20 PM John Lange <j...@johnlange.ca> wrote: > Fax over T38 works and works reliably. We have many in the field at > customer sites. The trick is configuring all the devices correctly; SIP > trunking provider, SBC, Asterisk, and ATA. There are actually MFP devices > that claim they have native support for SIP/T38 but I've never tried > getting one of these to work. > > That being said, virtualFax (fax to email and email to fax) is a much nicer > solution. I don't like faxing over T38 but it's there and it works if you > need it. > > With respect to handsets; > > Aastra are starting to fall behind since they were purchased by Mitel. Used > to be our "go-to" phones, robust and stable, easy to provision, but now > falling behind. > > Cisco SIP phones (SPA series) were originally SIPura phones (thus the SPA > in the model name), then purchased by Linksys, then purchased by Cisco. The > Linksys SPA942 was a great phone in it's day but it's starting to show it's > age. Cisco stopped releasing firmware updates for it years ago and we've > been phasing them out of service ever since. > > We trialed Grandstream at one customer and ended up replacing them for free > due to the very poor quality and haven't touched them since. I would assume > they have improved in the last 6 years. > > The Polycom VVX series are arguably the best quality phones but they are > not the cheapest. If you look at the larger hosted voice providers, most of > them use Polycom. The difference in the cost of the handset spread over a 5 > year contract is less than $1/month. > > The nice thing about the Polycom VVX series is that they are compatible > with a variety of systems, including Microsoft Lync. That means the > investment is protected if you want to change platforms at a later date. > > Digium also has handsets now. I've never tested them. > > All of the above being said; in my opinion, the days of the "home rolled" > Asterisk PBX deployment are over. You can buy a fully featured, > manufacturer supported, configured and deployed PBX from a major vendor for > less than the cost of a server with an FXO card running FreeXXX based on > Asterisk. > > If you are a hobbyist and enjoy that sort of thing then great. But if you > just want a feature rich, stable, hassle free PBX at a good price; Asterisk > is probably not the best choice. > > Regards, > > John >
