Ideally, I prefer setting transmission speed at the machine and not letting IOS 
do anything regarding speed.

Yes, the handshake “noise” samples, so to speak (RTP payload) in a fax over SIP 
will always be UDP; the signaling (SIP) could be TCP or UDP. If you do have a 
poor connection, you could lose signaling due to packet loss, and the 
connection terminate (whereas TCP would attempt a retransmission).

Admittedly, mostly a mute point because if you have packet loss for sip, you 
generally have packet loss with all other protocols .... unless; the loss is 
due to a poor / ill informed QoS strategy that happens to be trashing 
signaling? Then again, likely a limited scenario that would generally impact 
other things beyond faxing.

All this drives to my final point.

I love to know why something works too! As I have grown older though (Hey, 
still under 40); I’ve found it more efficient to me, to focus that effort only 
in areas that will benefit me into the future. I think as we grow older, time 
and it’s use becomes more valuable; at least it has for me.

Most of us in the industry who have had to deal with faxing over VoIP and 
faxing over sip have come to the unofficial consensus that it is much more 
effective, when facing faxing issues with fax over VoIP/SIP, to throw a set of 
known fixes at the problem and in doing so, generally solves our issue or 
reduces the scope of issue enough to be accepted by the customer.

You could burn your cycles getting an RCA on every fax issue you encounter; I’d 
ask though, to what end? I would ask myself if understanding the peculiarities 
of the faxing issue and its founding conflicts are going to create knowledge I 
can use to grow and build, or would it be an investment in understanding a 
legacy? I tend to answer with the latter for faxing.

Sure, grasping the configuration fundamentals are necessary as long as 
customers still fax; but is “knowing” how faxing works like you “know” how sip 
works a worth while rabbit hole? I’d say not.

Regarding NSF; back in the day some fax machines would transmit proprietary 
capabilities encoded into the frequency modulation (Ricoh and Konica Minolta 
did this, some others I’m sure too). The idea was that if you did an “intra 
vendor” fax (same to same), you could get “enhanced” faxing abilities. It was 
like SDP’s weird analog cousin from the 80s with crooked teeth that shows up 
only to the family reunions (no offense to all the dentally challenged weird 
cousins from the 80s out there).

The issue IOS had when it got in the middle as a fax relay, is that it would 
demodulate and decode the fax tones; since these “enhanced” capabilities 
(tones) weren’t standard, IOS would kill the transmission. Enter NSF, which 
overwrites the “non standard facilities” in the demodulated transmission and 
only allows the standard group 3 requirements.

To your point though, it probably won’t fix much nowadays because most machines 
don’t do that anymore. Still a useful command if your Grandfather’s fax machine 
ever made it onto a customer’s network though.

-Ryan-

On May 9, 2018, at 11:00, Anthony Holloway 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

Thanks for replying Ryan, I enjoy reading your replies.  Shall we post the 
popcorn image again?

I agree that setting the fax machine to 14400 helps with when it's moved around 
the environment, and the different gateways may or may not be set correctly.  
However, I was wondering more for the stationary scenario.  As in, if you are 
troubleshooting a fax machine which isn't currently moving, would setting the 
TX speed on the machine, really be  critical step.  I do think that setting it 
couldn't hurt, and if you're taking shots at a problem, then why not, but I 
think you and I can agree on this: I want to know why something works, versus 
just throwing everything at the problem until it works.

Also, you said: "..in the sip world if you’re using UDP."
The choice in SIP transport for is signaling only, not the transmission of 
payload (RTP for passthrough or T.38 for relay), which if I'm not mistaken, is 
always UDP.  Am I incorrect in my understanding, or possibly in what you were 
saying?

Lastly, have you considered disabling Non-Standard Facilities (NSF) in IOS?  I 
do this, but honestly, I've not actually seen it solve anything, I just think 
it's a good practice, since it really only works with like fax machines.

On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 2:53 PM Ryan Huff 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Anthony,

I like to do it at every angle possible; by changing TX at the machine level, I 
ensure that is the machine capability no matter where it gets moved to in the 
enterprise (Ex. Moved to a different department using a different VG). I like 
dealing with it on the dial-peer level sometimes because I get more 
granularity, and that is a personal preference. Also, software in my 
experience, has not been reliably great at muxing fax modulation (reducing a 
higher TX to 14400/9600, disabling ECM). The more I can address at the machine 
level and the less “interferers” I allow to get involved with the transmission, 
the better experiences I’ve had.

Lowering the transmission rate helps because the transmission often has less 
loss. This is especially helpful with TDM if you’re going over weaker/old 
copper and also in the sip world if you’re using UDP. ECM is computationally 
intensive and requires dedicated resources in carrier switches to successfully 
deliver error correction end to end; most carriers don’t do a great job 
handling ECM and by turning it off, helps to avoid problems. Disabling ECM will 
also prevent cancellations of transmissions that would be successful, but might 
have a little loss.

Not all fax machines are created equally, tempered with the user’s perception 
that, a fax machine is a fax machine and they should all work no less reliably 
than an “email machine”. One must also consider the “younger than 30” workforce 
has a really good chance of never having used/seen a fax machine outside of 
work or the Smithsonian Institution and their perception of a fax machine’s 
reliability is that of email, texting or IM -it should just work because it 
always does. The reality is though, faxing is an old analog technology (subject 
to all the frailties of an analog technology) that we have thrown enough 
“digital dressing” on to make users think it isn’t a crappy way to communicate. 
It’s the legacy that “big print” created back in the late 90s early 00’s 
because they didn’t want the faxing business to die off ….. ok, that may have 
been a bit “tin foil hat’ish”, but you get the idea.

There is a wildly diverse fax machine population out there with varying 
implementations of the facsimile standard; some support SG3, some are pre-SG3, 
some only have a 14.4 kbps modem in them cause it’s that friggin’ old; getting 
faxing “to work everywhere” like one can call from phone to phone just isn’t a 
reality any more, and its only going to get worse as time goes on.

The point is and because of this; getting faxing to work is less of a binary 
science and more of a, “getting it to mostly work for all the places your users 
send faxes”. These are analog machines; their capabilities and use of protocols 
aren’t generally updated on the fly or at all in some cases, much less known by 
the user that updating should occur. Generally speaking, the way the fax 
machine used the facsimile standard out of the box is the way it’ll work for 
the rest of its days.

-Ryan-

From: Brian Meade<mailto:[email protected]>

Sent: Tuesday, May 8, 2018 2:24 PM
To: Anthony Holloway<mailto:[email protected]>
Cc: Ryan Huff<mailto:[email protected]>; 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>; Fernando 
Fernandez Lopez<mailto:[email protected]>; Jonatan 
Quezada<mailto:[email protected]>; Adrian 
Arevalo-Orozco<mailto:[email protected]>

Subject: Re: [cisco-voip] refining dial peers for Fax

It really does seem to help from what I've seen.  Users have accepted faxing is 
going to be slow.  Most machines I find have it set to 9600 anyways.

On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 2:17 PM, Anthony Holloway 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
/squints eyes
Not sure if sarcasm, or helpful.

On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 12:48 PM Brian Meade 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I like to limit down to 9600.  That seems to work out much better.

On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 12:54 PM, Anthony Holloway 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
What's the explanation for setting the fax machine itself to 14400, or the 
dial-peer for that matter, when for the most part SG3 is not supported, and SG3 
gets spoofed down to G3, and the command "fax rate voice", which is the 
default, already caps at 14400?

I might have explained that poorly, but basically, I see 14400 speeds all the 
time, and I don't change the fax rate command nor set the speed on the machine.

I'm not challenging what you're saying, just trying to understand it.  Fax has 
been a pain for me, just like everyone else, so the more I know, the better I 
can deal with it.

I do like to avoid unnecessary config when possible, but in this case, I just 
don't know if there is proven evidence, that you need to do these two things.

On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 11:35 AM Ryan Huff 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Set the TX/RX rate at 14400 kbps and turn ECM. I would do that at the machine 
level first, and/or the dial-peer level second.
Sent from my iPhone

On May 8, 2018, at 12:17, Jonatan Quezada 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
we are finding that after our sip cutover, that our faxes are happiest 
signalling over a T1 connection that originally we were trying to get away 
from, however trouble shooting was terrible and we are moving past having all 
voice traffic on the SIP trunk.

Currently we are signalling for voice( calls ) only on the trunk and fax 
traffic can come in and out via that T1.

My question is , still every so often we are seeing fax drops and incomplete 
page transmissions.

looking at the controller the interface is solid no slips and seems to 
negotiate the connections just fine. but again every so often there are drops 
or sending fails altogether.

We are wanting to try limiting the transmission rates but on the ATA190 and 
191s you cannot rate limit on the device. It sounds like this needs to done at 
the dial peer level. if so what is the best starting configuration for the dial 
peers that will handle on ly fax and go out a certain gateway that has the T1 
on it?

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice-unified-communications/unified-border-element/115742-fax-modem-call-flows-00.html

Im looking at this call flow

Telco - PRI - GW - MGCP - CUCM - SIP - ATA187 - 
Fax/Modem<https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice-unified-communications/unified-border-element/115742-fax-modem-call-flows-00.html#anc7>

except the ATAs are 190 and 191s

If we go the dial peer route, since the DID are not contiguous I will need a 
dial peer for each one huh?








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Johnny Q
Voice Technology Analyst - TelNet
Chemeketa Community College
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
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