RE: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Darren Nickerson Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 9:29 PM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable? Tom, if you really only have a single-port PRI and can't shell out for a dual, then a T1 fax board is out of the question - it's even more cash. That doesn't leave you with a lot of options except to outsource your faxing. Why not give Lee's stuff a try some weekend when your system's idle? Unfortunately, 1.) I am recently wrestling with stability issues on *, so this takes a back burner... 2.) Our existing analog setup is functioning quite nicely, thank you. 3.) Our system is not busy on the weekends, but it handles our after-hours calls and if it goes down we could have a major problem (we deal with hazardous materials...) Tom ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
I have downloaded iaxmodem and gone through the readme but not yet installed it. I currently use rxfax to receive in the vicinity of 1200 faxes per day and 5000 or more pages (faxes vary from single page to 30 pages) per E1, with a peak load of about 12 concurrent inbound faxes to rxfax. Best I can tell my failure rate is about 0.8%. I have been testing using Hylafax for faxout with an 8 port analog fax modem card and a couple PAP2NA's and this works well, but I am very much looking forward to checking out iaxmodem. Especially if using Hylafax will give me ECM. Craig - Original Message - From: Lee Howard [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2005 10:47 AM Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable? Darren Nickerson wrote: We prefer the Eicon Diva server and Brooktrout TR1034 boards, which are known to work well with HylaFAX since we've had our share of headaches with the 2977's. Well, part of my preference for the 2977s involves my strong dislike for the way that the Diva Servers and BrookTrouts do things. It's enough of a dislike to get me over the learning curve of how to properly set up the 2977s for HylaFAX use. Having said that, I'm excited to see Lee and Steve improving IAXmodem and the underlying SpanDSP library, and look forward to the day that is performs similarly (or better) to the DSP-laden boards we presently favor! If your favor involves V.34 then it may be a while before the relevant patents expire. Lee. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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 ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
On Thu, 2005-10-13 at 14:03 +0800, Craig Guy wrote: I have downloaded iaxmodem and gone through the readme but not yet installed it. I currently use rxfax to receive in the vicinity of 1200 faxes per day and 5000 or more pages (faxes vary from single page to 30 pages) per E1, with a peak load of about 12 concurrent inbound faxes to rxfax. Best I can tell my failure rate is about 0.8%. I have been testing using Hylafax for faxout with an 8 port analog fax modem card and a couple PAP2NA's and this works well, but I am very much looking forward to checking out iaxmodem. Especially if using Hylafax will give me ECM. Craig You may have already planned this, but I would be interested in hearing how it works for you. Granted that will take some time for you to even know how well it works ... As a side note I am looking at iaxmodem now (although I am easily distracted) with the hopes of using some of the modem codecs spandsp supports to at least get tdd support working for asterisk, and the end hope of more modem protocols. -- Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com Bret McDanel UK +44 870 340 4605 Germany +49 801 777 555 3402 US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200 FreeWorldDialup: 635378 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
I'm trying to figure out what an appropriate deployment model might be. Whether to have iaxmodem installed on the hylafax server with a switched ethernet connection for iax2 to the * server with the PRI, or to have the iaxmodem on the PRI * server and channel the tty comms across the network. I suspect that the latter might work ok over a WAN so I could have a central hylafax server with distributed * servers running iaxmodem at the far end of wan links (up to 100ms latency). The only issue is that I want to retain rxfax on the PRI * servers for incoming faxes. Lee, if I install iaxmodem on a * server for outbound faxing from hylafax, can I still use rxfax on the same server to receive faxes? Craig - Original Message - From: trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com; [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2005 3:06 PM Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable? ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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 ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
On Thu, 2005-10-13 at 15:55 +0800, Craig Guy wrote: I'm trying to figure out what an appropriate deployment model might be. Whether to have iaxmodem installed on the hylafax server with a switched ethernet connection for iax2 to the * server with the PRI, or to have the iaxmodem on the PRI * server and channel the tty comms across the network. I suspect that the latter might work ok over a WAN so I could have a central hylafax server with distributed * servers running iaxmodem at the far end of wan links (up to 100ms latency). The only issue is that I want to retain rxfax on the PRI * servers for incoming faxes. Based on the docs in iaxmodem its better to have iaxmodem on your asterisk server and hylafax (if needed) on a remote server. The lag issues between iaxmodem and asterisk are more critical than hylafax and iaxmodem. Lee, if I install iaxmodem on a * server for outbound faxing from hylafax, can I still use rxfax on the same server to receive faxes? IAXModem works like an iax client, if you redirect calls to that extension they goto iaxmodem if you dont they are handled elsewhere. Treat that as just another extension for all intents and purposes. Problems however may arise if asterisk is told to redirect all calls with a fax tone to rxfax, so you have to deal with that in your dialplan. You would have to either get clever with the extension or do did based routing ... exten = fax,1,gotoif(something?2:3) exten = fax,2,rxfax(somefile) exten = fax,3,Dial(IAX2/iaxmodemExt,60,R) Although this isnt an issue if you do did based routing and the given did is one or the other for that context but not both. Hope this helps (and I hope I am right, but I have been reading a lot and think I am, I am sure lee will point out anything I got wrong) -- Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com Bret McDanel UK +44 870 340 4605 Germany +49 801 777 555 3402 US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200 FreeWorldDialup: 635378 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
Craig Guy wrote: I have downloaded iaxmodem and gone through the readme but not yet installed it. I currently use rxfax to receive in the vicinity of 1200 faxes per day and 5000 or more pages (faxes vary from single page to 30 pages) per E1, with a peak load of about 12 concurrent inbound faxes to rxfax. Best I can tell my failure rate is about 0.8%. I have been testing using Hylafax for faxout with an 8 port analog fax modem card and a couple PAP2NA's and this works well, but I am very much looking forward to checking out iaxmodem. Especially if using Hylafax will give me ECM. No. No. This can't be right. We've been hearing authoritative statements on this mailing list that soft modems can't possibly work. :-) I have no clear idea how many people actually use my software for fairly high volumes. There are now clearly many thousands successfully using it for modest levels of faxing. I have heard from a few people doing rather higher volumes than you. Other people have problem - I mean genuine problems, rather than the frame slips issues. I don't get enough feedback to really work out what it going on with those troublesome installations. Regards, Steve ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
I have no clear idea how many people actually use my software for fairly high volumes. There are now clearly many thousands successfully using it for modest levels of faxing. I have heard from a few people doing rather higher volumes than you. Other people have problem - I mean genuine problems, rather than the frame slips issues. I don't get enough feedback to really work out what it going on with those troublesome installations. What is the best way to determine if problems are genuine problems or are frame-slip issues? I have a dual xeon 3.0/2GB ram with a T100P connected to a PRI. We do not have a very high fax volume. Right now we recieve about 15 faxes per day, with each fax tending to be anywhere from 5 to 25 pages. (e.g. 75 to 375 pages/day) I have found 3 specific fax machines (all 3 are internal fax machines at our remote offices) that refuse to fax even a single page to spanDSP. 2 of the machines are HP machines, and the the 3rd was a brand I'd never heard of. I can attempt (and fail) to send from one of the 3 problem machines and then immediately send a perfect 25 page fax from one of our other machines. zttest shows 100% most of the time, but 99.987793%'s pop up in there sometimes. I'm guessing this is an indication of frame-slips. Do some fax machines just have better error correction than others? All 3 of the problem faxe machines belong to us, so if the problem does not sound like frame-slips, I can provide any kind of testing or logs that might help determine what the issue is. Eric ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
Craig Guy wrote: I'm trying to figure out what an appropriate deployment model might be. Whether to have iaxmodem installed on the hylafax server with a switched ethernet connection for iax2 to the * server with the PRI, or to have the iaxmodem on the PRI * server and channel the tty comms across the network. You can try running the IAXmodem IAX channel over your switched network, but my recommendation would be to always run IAXmodem on the Asterisk system (to prevent even minute audio corruption). In my experience passing modulated fax audio over a small LAN has not been that big of a problem. Everyone that plugs fax machines into SIP ATAs (and even IAXys, I've heard) are a testimony to that. However, in those situations I think that either they have a very well-tuned network, a very low-traffic network, or the ECM capabilities and protocol error recovery features of their fax machines are managing to work around any audio corruption that may occur. I wouldn't recommend passing modulated fax audio over a UDP/IP network for businesses where those faxes are critical. As you may observe from the IAXmodem docs and patchset within the tarball, I have used IAXmodem in conjunction with termnetd+ttyd from the termpkg package. In my testing and small production usage with that configuration I have not had any severe problems with the tty or with any degree of data corruption occurring. However, I'm not yet convinced that the modem initialization, resetting, and other control handling that occurs on both ends of HylaFAX-faxmodem communications. In other words, I'm not yet certain that I've tuned my termpkg usage perfectly for use on high-traffic deployments where one call may arrive moments after the last one ended. If my concerns are confirmed and if there is no solution with termpkg to improve things, then I will have to create a busy-out AT command for IAXmodem that will tell the modem to return congestion until the busy-out setting is removed, and HylaFAX would busy the modem out during initialization and reinitialization cycles. I do this already with other DID modems where busying out a line is possible. I suspect that the latter might work ok over a WAN so I could have a central hylafax server with distributed * servers running iaxmodem at the far end of wan links (up to 100ms latency). I would suspect that you could run remote ttys over the internet and still use them for fax, yes... as long as IAXmodem is on or very close to the Asterisk server. The only issue is that I want to retain rxfax on the PRI * servers for incoming faxes. Lee, if I install iaxmodem on a * server for outbound faxing from hylafax, can I still use rxfax on the same server to receive faxes? If you're really so-possessed, yes. ;-) The only trick to watch out for is spandsp. Both rxfax and IAXmodem use spandsp, so you'd want to make sure that the version of spandsp that you're using is happy with both rxfax and IAXmodem. Lee. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
On Tuesday 11 Oct 2005 23:57, Lee Howard wrote: Bob Goddard wrote: On Tuesday 11 Oct 2005 22:41, Lee Howard wrote: Tom Rymes wrote: Use the right tool for the job!!! Use a hardware based DSP for faxing not software based. Why is a soft-DSP to be considered any less-capable than hardware ones? Timing. The reason why I put IAXmodem together in the first place was because of a growing frustration that I've had with hardware chipsets and the lack of attention that the manufacturers generally afford to resolving fax-related bugs in their products. Don't use any form of winmodem then. [...] ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
RE: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bob Goddard Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 6:35 PM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable? On Tuesday 11 Oct 2005 22:41, Lee Howard wrote: Tom Rymes wrote: Frankly, I would recommend that you forget about trying to fax with Asterisk. Buy a good Multitech analog modem and install HylaFAX. Use the right tool for the job!!! Actually, you can use HylaFAX and Asterisk together. https://sourceforge.net/projects/iaxmodem/ Just be certain that your audio path doesn't run over any lossy medium (so run IAXmodem on your Asterisk box). I'll expand on what Tom meant Use a hardware based DSP for faxing not software based. Actually Bob, that isn't what I meant. Lee simply suggested a different way (IAXModem instead of analog modem) of implementing what I meant. I would still recommend using analog if you can but, if you cannot, use IAXModem from Lee. Asterisk's faxing capabilities are not nearly as advanced, stable, or easy to set up as HylaFAX. Also, there seem to be many problems with frame slipping and the like that screw up faxing over Digium cards, and maybe others as well. Either way, I was just saying that grabbing a good modem (see HylaFAX list archives for suggestions - NOT USRobotics!!!) and installing HylaFAX would be easier, more reliable, and all-in-all, a better solution than messing with Asterisk's built-in fax capability. Tom ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
RE: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 5:09 PM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable? On Tue, 2005-10-11 at 17:01 -0400, Tom Rymes wrote: Frankly, I would recommend that you forget about trying to fax with Asterisk. Buy a good Multitech analog modem and install HylaFAX. Use the right tool for the job!!! Asterisk may be able to fax better in the somewhat near future. One of the things holding up T.38 support is the inability for asterisk to switch codecs on the fly. I am not saying that is the only thing, just one of the things. Well 1.2 is supposed to have better support in that regard, which means that work on T.38 can happen in a better way in the future. This is good news. (I would like to be able to receive faxes reliably over our PRI) Until then, however, I still recommend HylaFAX. Tom ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
Tom Rymes wrote: (I would like to be able to receive faxes reliably over our PRI) Until then, however, I still recommend HylaFAX. If your PRI comes in to a TE405P or somesuch then you can pass fax DIDs out through another port on the TE405P and out to a T1 faxmodem (such as a Patton 2977) or a T1 channel bank and then to analog modems. Lee. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
On Wednesday 12 Oct 2005 14:53, Tom Rymes wrote: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bob Goddard Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 6:35 PM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable? On Tuesday 11 Oct 2005 22:41, Lee Howard wrote: Tom Rymes wrote: Frankly, I would recommend that you forget about trying to fax with Asterisk. Buy a good Multitech analog modem and install HylaFAX. Use the right tool for the job!!! Actually, you can use HylaFAX and Asterisk together. https://sourceforge.net/projects/iaxmodem/ Just be certain that your audio path doesn't run over any lossy medium (so run IAXmodem on your Asterisk box). I'll expand on what Tom meant Use a hardware based DSP for faxing not software based. Actually Bob, that isn't what I meant. Lee simply suggested a different way (IAXModem instead of analog modem) of implementing what I meant. I would still recommend using analog if you can but, if you cannot, use IAXModem from Lee. Okay! Asterisk's faxing capabilities are not nearly as advanced, stable, or easy to set up as HylaFAX. Also, there seem to be many problems with frame slipping and the like that screw up faxing over Digium cards, and maybe others as well. Does Hylafax do software based faxing? As far as I knew, it has always required a DSP. Either way, I was just saying that grabbing a good modem (see HylaFAX list archives for suggestions - NOT USRobotics!!!) and installing HylaFAX would be easier, more reliable, and all-in-all, a better solution than messing with Asterisk's built-in fax capability. In other words, don't use a soft fax. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
On Wednesday 12 Oct 2005 14:54, Tom Rymes wrote: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 5:09 PM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable? On Tue, 2005-10-11 at 17:01 -0400, Tom Rymes wrote: Frankly, I would recommend that you forget about trying to fax with Asterisk. Buy a good Multitech analog modem and install HylaFAX. Use the right tool for the job!!! Asterisk may be able to fax better in the somewhat near future. One of the things holding up T.38 support is the inability for asterisk to switch codecs on the fly. I am not saying that is the only thing, just one of the things. Well 1.2 is supposed to have better support in that regard, which means that work on T.38 can happen in a better way in the future. This is good news. (I would like to be able to receive faxes reliably over our PRI) It will never happen unless the card has DSPs. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
Bob Goddard wrote: On Wednesday 12 Oct 2005 14:53, Tom Rymes wrote: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bob Goddard Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 6:35 PM To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable? On Tuesday 11 Oct 2005 22:41, Lee Howard wrote: Tom Rymes wrote: Frankly, I would recommend that you forget about trying to fax with Asterisk. Buy a good Multitech analog modem and install HylaFAX. Use the right tool for the job!!! Actually, you can use HylaFAX and Asterisk together. https://sourceforge.net/projects/iaxmodem/ Just be certain that your audio path doesn't run over any lossy medium (so run IAXmodem on your Asterisk box). I'll expand on what Tom meant Use a hardware based DSP for faxing not software based. Actually Bob, that isn't what I meant. Lee simply suggested a different way (IAXModem instead of analog modem) of implementing what I meant. I would still recommend using analog if you can but, if you cannot, use IAXModem from Lee. Okay! Asterisk's faxing capabilities are not nearly as advanced, stable, or easy to set up as HylaFAX. Also, there seem to be many problems with frame slipping and the like that screw up faxing over Digium cards, and maybe others as well. Does Hylafax do software based faxing? As far as I knew, it has always required a DSP. See IAXModem above for the soft DSP. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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 ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
On Wed, 2005-10-12 at 16:48 -0500, Tim Litwiller wrote: See IAXModem above for the soft DSP. There is very little info on the sf.net page regarding its capabilities ... Does it only do fax or does it do other data communications? What fax protocols are supported? Does the destination path from asterisk-whatever need to be iax or will asterisk properly translate to a different medium (eg presumably iaxmodem does iax to asterisk, then from asterisk does it matter if you use sip, zap, h.323, whatever ?) I cant see where it would matter once it hits asterisk, but stranger things have happened ... -- Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com Bret McDanel UK +44 870 340 4605 Germany +49 801 777 555 3402 US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200 FreeWorldDialup: 635378 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com wrote: There is very little info on the sf.net page regarding its capabilities ... Right now that's intentional. I still consider it developer-grade code. That said, I do use it on small production usage, and it's fine there with a few known issues that I'm working on that probably won't be of consequence to most. Does it only do fax or does it do other data communications? Only fax. What fax protocols are supported? Class 1 and Class 1.0 - V.27ter, V.29, and partial V.17 (all as provided by spandsp - Steve's working on the V.code and I'm working on the T.code). Does the destination path from asterisk-whatever need to be iax or will asterisk properly translate to a different medium (eg presumably iaxmodem does iax to asterisk, then from asterisk does it matter if you use sip, zap, h.323, whatever ?) I cant see where it would matter once it hits asterisk, but stranger things have happened ... IAXmodem doesn't care what the channel type is beyond Asterisk. Realize, though, that for most usages I recommend running IAXmodem on the same system as Asterisk, and that's to avoid any audio corruption that would normally occur (even in minute amounts) when passing over a UDP/IP network. So unless you're running your SIP or H.323 fax endpoint also on the same system or have somehow managed to prevent any audio corruption (jitters, etc... you should know that caveat) along that path, then the answer to the question is Zap is what you *should* use. You can try other things, but you'll most likely just be wasting your time. Lee. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
On Oct 12, 2005, at 3:44 PM, Bob Goddard wrote: Asterisk's faxing capabilities are not nearly as advanced, stable, or easy to set up as HylaFAX. Also, there seem to be many problems with frame slipping and the like that screw up faxing over Digium cards, and maybe others as well. Does Hylafax do software based faxing? As far as I knew, it has always required a DSP. Lee would be the guy to ask, seeing as he is involved (deeply involved, I think) in HylaFAX development. AFAIK, HylaFAX does require a DSP, but IAXModem is designed to function as the DSP, thereby allowing HylaFAX to take calls that come in via asterisk without additional hardware (such as a T1 fax-modem, a crossover cable and a multi-port T1 card, as Lee suggested.). Either way, I was just saying that grabbing a good modem (see HylaFAX list archives for suggestions - NOT USRobotics!!!) and installing HylaFAX would be easier, more reliable, and all-in-all, a better solution than messing with Asterisk's built-in fax capability. In other words, don't use a soft fax. No, software vs hardware isn't the point. As Lee mentioned, there are many problems with the hardware side of things, too. What I am asserting is that Asterisk's fax capabilities are an inferior choice to HylaFAX at this time. Maybe in a year or two that will no longer be the case. Also, once Lee has some time to develop IAXModem further, I bet it will be a great option, and it is software based. Tom ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
On Oct 12, 2005, at 11:26 AM, Lee Howard wrote: Tom Rymes wrote: (I would like to be able to receive faxes reliably over our PRI) Until then, however, I still recommend HylaFAX. If your PRI comes in to a TE405P or somesuch then you can pass fax DIDs out through another port on the TE405P and out to a T1 faxmodem (such as a Patton 2977) or a T1 channel bank and then to analog modems. Good call, Lee. Unfortunately, we only have a single port Sangoma card in our asterisk server. In order to do what you suggest, I would have to buy a dual port card and a channel bank or T1 modem. Thats more $$$ than is warranted by our fax traffic. Also, given reports of problems related to frame-slippage and other weirdness encountered when sending data/fax through Asterisk, I'm reluctant to invest that money. Have you tried this setup yourself? Tom ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
On Wed, 2005-10-12 at 18:18 -0400, Tom Rymes wrote: On Oct 12, 2005, at 11:26 AM, Lee Howard wrote: If your PRI comes in to a TE405P or somesuch then you can pass fax DIDs out through another port on the TE405P and out to a T1 faxmodem (such as a Patton 2977) or a T1 channel bank and then to analog modems. Good call, Lee. Unfortunately, we only have a single port Sangoma card in our asterisk server. In order to do what you suggest, I would have to buy a dual port card and a channel bank or T1 modem. Thats more $$$ than is warranted by our fax traffic. Also, given reports of problems related to frame-slippage and other weirdness encountered when sending data/fax through Asterisk, I'm reluctant to invest that money. Have you tried this setup yourself? Cant iaxmodem work by having asterisk bridge the pri channel as needed (did based routing perhaps) and then have hylafax use iaxmodem as the modem it uses. That should result in no additional hardware, which means testing can happen with little cost to see if it works for you. As I understand it iaxmodem just acts like a modem, and doesnt actually do the processing that hylafax does, so the two would work together instead of one or the other. I may be wrong on this, but that is the way it looks to me so far. -- Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com Bret McDanel UK +44 870 340 4605 Germany +49 801 777 555 3402 US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200 FreeWorldDialup: 635378 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
Tom Rymes wrote: On Oct 12, 2005, at 11:26 AM, Lee Howard wrote: Tom Rymes wrote: (I would like to be able to receive faxes reliably over our PRI) Until then, however, I still recommend HylaFAX. If your PRI comes in to a TE405P or somesuch then you can pass fax DIDs out through another port on the TE405P and out to a T1 faxmodem (such as a Patton 2977) or a T1 channel bank and then to analog modems. Good call, Lee. Unfortunately, we only have a single port Sangoma card in our asterisk server. In order to do what you suggest, I would have to buy a dual port card and a channel bank or T1 modem. Thats more $$$ than is warranted by our fax traffic. IAXmodem then ;-) As long as you're okay with V.29 (9600 bps). Keep a back-up analog line around attached to a hardware modem until you're completely certain that IAXmodem is working perfectly for your needs. Also, given reports of problems related to frame-slippage and other weirdness encountered when sending data/fax through Asterisk, I'm reluctant to invest that money. Have you tried this setup yourself? Yes I have a Patton 2977 (driven by HylaFAX), connected via crossover to one port on a TE405P (driven by Asterisk) which has another port connected to the T1 from the telco. Asterisk bridges the two for sending and receiving. Receiving is wonderful. Sending is also quite good, however, there are some quirks with the Patton firmware which need to be resolved for me to be completely delighted. I've faxed with IAXmodem through that same TE405P without any troubles. I've also faxed with IAXmodem through an X100P without troubles. I've never used any of the TDM cards from Digium. Lots of people seem to report other kinds of fax failures with them, and I don't know more than that to comment on it. People have talked about frame slips a lot, and I'm not really sure what to make of it. My understanding is that a frame slip causes a momentary audio disruption (as far as the audio stream goes). So I would think that as long as it's not happening at inopportune moments or in a frequent manner that a single frame slip shouldn't really take down a fax session. But, I'm sure that it would depend on the software. As far as HylaFAX goes, it wouldn't notice the frame slip. The modem would, and it would probably report it as corrupt data or carrier loss... from which both are easily recoverable. Lee. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com wrote: Cant iaxmodem work by having asterisk bridge the pri channel as needed (did based routing perhaps) and then have hylafax use iaxmodem as the modem it uses. That should result in no additional hardware, which means testing can happen with little cost to see if it works for you. As I understand it iaxmodem just acts like a modem, and doesnt actually do the processing that hylafax does, so the two would work together instead of one or the other. I may be wrong on this, but that is the way it looks to me so far. This is all correct. Lee. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
On Oct 12, 2005, at 6:33 PM, trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com wrote: On Wed, 2005-10-12 at 18:18 -0400, Tom Rymes wrote: On Oct 12, 2005, at 11:26 AM, Lee Howard wrote: If your PRI comes in to a TE405P or somesuch then you can pass fax DIDs out through another port on the TE405P and out to a T1 faxmodem (such as a Patton 2977) or a T1 channel bank and then to analog modems. Good call, Lee. Unfortunately, we only have a single port Sangoma card in our asterisk server. In order to do what you suggest, I would have to buy a dual port card and a channel bank or T1 modem. Thats more $$$ than is warranted by our fax traffic. Also, given reports of problems related to frame-slippage and other weirdness encountered when sending data/fax through Asterisk, I'm reluctant to invest that money. Have you tried this setup yourself? Cant iaxmodem work by having asterisk bridge the pri channel as needed (did based routing perhaps) and then have hylafax use iaxmodem as the modem it uses. That should result in no additional hardware, which means testing can happen with little cost to see if it works for you. As I understand it iaxmodem just acts like a modem, and doesnt actually do the processing that hylafax does, so the two would work together instead of one or the other. I may be wrong on this, but that is the way it looks to me so far. This is true, but: 1.) Lee has stated that IAXModem is still Developer-grade code. 2.) I don't have a spare PRI for testing, and our phone system is far too mission critical for me to go mucking about with it and trying this out (especially given #1, above). 3.) It will not be easy for me to test out this setup without simply switching our production HylaFAX server to use IAXModem, which I am again reluctant to do, seeing as it is our production server and we depend on it. Testing fax service setups is notoriously difficult due to the huge number of different fax machines, etc that are out there. Tom ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
On Wed, 2005-10-12 at 18:45 -0400, Tom Rymes wrote: This is true, but: 1.) Lee has stated that IAXModem is still Developer-grade code. 2.) I don't have a spare PRI for testing, and our phone system is far too mission critical for me to go mucking about with it and trying this out (especially given #1, above). 3.) It will not be easy for me to test out this setup without simply switching our production HylaFAX server to use IAXModem, which I am again reluctant to do, seeing as it is our production server and we depend on it. Testing fax service setups is notoriously difficult due to the huge number of different fax machines, etc that are out there. redirect one did to iaxmodem for now, test it out, you shouldnt have to reconfigure everything to get this to work. iaxmodem connects via iax so it acts like any other client in that regard, so you should just set up an acct and redir an unused did to it, assuming you have an unused did of course. Would that not solve in the short term all of those issues or am I missing something? -- Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com Bret McDanel UK +44 870 340 4605 Germany +49 801 777 555 3402 US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200 FreeWorldDialup: 635378 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
On Oct 12, 2005, at 6:58 PM, trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com wrote: On Wed, 2005-10-12 at 18:45 -0400, Tom Rymes wrote: This is true, but: 1.) Lee has stated that IAXModem is still Developer-grade code. 2.) I don't have a spare PRI for testing, and our phone system is far too mission critical for me to go mucking about with it and trying this out (especially given #1, above). 3.) It will not be easy for me to test out this setup without simply switching our production HylaFAX server to use IAXModem, which I am again reluctant to do, seeing as it is our production server and we depend on it. Testing fax service setups is notoriously difficult due to the huge number of different fax machines, etc that are out there. redirect one did to iaxmodem for now, test it out, you shouldnt have to reconfigure everything to get this to work. iaxmodem connects via iax so it acts like any other client in that regard, so you should just set up an acct and redir an unused did to it, assuming you have an unused did of course. Would that not solve in the short term all of those issues or am I missing something? Well, I can redirect a DID to it, but I have no fax traffic going to that DID, and I am still reluctant to install developer-grade code on my production asterisk server. I'm sure it would be OK, and I bet it would work great, but frankly I would rather wait for the code to develop further and give some others a chance to figure it out at first. I'm not a big fan of running my production servers on the bleeding edge, and I don't have a spare PRI to use for testing on a non-production basis. (got a spare $400 per month or so?) Tom ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
On Wed, 2005-10-12 at 19:19 -0400, Tom Rymes wrote: Would that not solve in the short term all of those issues or am I missing something? Well, I can redirect a DID to it, but I have no fax traffic going to that DID, and I am still reluctant to install developer-grade code on my production asterisk server. The idea of redirecting an unused did is so that you can develop your test cases then see if the code works how you expected it. I would hope that you wouldnt have any real traffic aside from your test cases :) As for development code, I can understand that, and is actually a good practice to only use stable stuff... However remember that it is open source and often it stays in development much longer than most companies selling a product keep code in the dev stages. This is because its not being sold so there isnt market pressure to make it 'stable'. Far too often commercial products (not all but enough) release 'stable' products that are far from it, infact they act more like they are in the final beta stages ... Perhaps Lee can comment on exactly how 'development grade' it really is, perhaps even cite some test cases where people have used it on larger scale operations (ie larger than a home users 1-2 times a month or less). -- Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com Bret McDanel UK +44 870 340 4605 Germany +49 801 777 555 3402 US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200 FreeWorldDialup: 635378 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com wrote: Perhaps Lee can comment on exactly how 'development grade' it really is, perhaps even cite some test cases where people have used it on larger scale operations (ie larger than a home users 1-2 times a month or less). According to sourceforge, there have currently been 68 downloads of the software. As there have been four releases, I suspect that many of those were repeat offenders coming back for updates. IAXmodem is merely a bridge between libiax2 and spandsp (the DSP part, not the txfax/rxfax Asterisk applications). Both libiax2 and spandsp have been through years of exposure already, and those are, for the most part, to be considered production-grade code. IAXmodem does use a relatively new feature in spandsp (the T.31 DCE) to produce a Class 1 modem, and that part has had relatively little exposure in comparison to, say, the V.29 modem in spandsp. In *my* usage of IAXmodem I've sent and received hundreds of faxes with it in development between IAXmodem and regular modems and IAXmodem and fax machines. In my usage of IAXmodem in real world production purposes I've sent probably a few hundred faxes and received maybe a little less than a hundred. I've not entirely dumped my Patton 2977 installations for mostly one major reason: spandsp doesn't yet support V.17 (14400 bps) fax reception very well. V.29 seems fine for the most part (I am troubleshooting the one exception that I know of). Once spandsp supports V.17 fax reception well I'll then be on a fast track to replacing my Patton installations and using IAXmodem instead. At that point I'll be able to say it's production-grade code because I'll actually be using full-blown on production systems. We must not confuse developer-grade with unstable. And production-grade does not mean stable, either. Currently IAXmodem is developer-grade because it's simply not had enough exposure for it to be called otherwise. Also, the documentation is only to be found within the README and other files within the tarball and there probably is some polish that I'd like to see done before I start promoting it as production-grade. But, none of this is due to any instability. (I interpret unstable to mean that the software is known to have unpredictable results. I would never have even released IAXmodem publicly in the first place if this were the case.) Lee. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
Lee Howard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes I have a Patton 2977 (driven by HylaFAX), connected via crossover to one port on a TE405P (driven by Asterisk) which has another port connected to the T1 from the telco. Asterisk bridges the two for sending and receiving. Receiving is wonderful. Sending is also quite good, however, there are some quirks with the Patton firmware which need to be resolved for me to be completely delighted. Like Lee, we've had much success using Asterisk as a bridge between the PSTN and a HylaFAX server with T1/E1 fax boards. We prefer the Eicon Diva server and Brooktrout TR1034 boards, which are known to work well with HylaFAX since we've had our share of headaches with the 2977's. If you're looking for something that works today with HylaFAX, supports all the important fax features including V.34-speed (33.6)faxing, I can recommend the Diva Server highly - it comes in 8 and 24-port PRI, and 2 and 8-port BRI flavors. Having said that, I'm excited to see Lee and Steve improving IAXmodem and the underlying SpanDSP library, and look forward to the day that is performs similarly (or better) to the DSP-laden boards we presently favor! Tom, if you really only have a single-port PRI and can't shell out for a dual, then a T1 fax board is out of the question - it's even more cash. That doesn't leave you with a lot of options except to outsource your faxing. Why not give Lee's stuff a try some weekend when your system's idle? -Darren -- Darren Nickerson Senior Sales Support Engineer iFAX Solutions, Inc. www.ifax.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] +1.215.438.4638 x8106 +1.215.243.8335 (fax) ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
Darren Nickerson wrote: We prefer the Eicon Diva server and Brooktrout TR1034 boards, which are known to work well with HylaFAX since we've had our share of headaches with the 2977's. Well, part of my preference for the 2977s involves my strong dislike for the way that the Diva Servers and BrookTrouts do things. It's enough of a dislike to get me over the learning curve of how to properly set up the 2977s for HylaFAX use. Having said that, I'm excited to see Lee and Steve improving IAXmodem and the underlying SpanDSP library, and look forward to the day that is performs similarly (or better) to the DSP-laden boards we presently favor! If your favor involves V.34 then it may be a while before the relevant patents expire. Lee. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
Lee Howard [EMAIL PROTECTED] Well, part of my preference for the 2977s involves my strong dislike for the way that the Diva Servers and BrookTrouts do things. It's enough of a dislike to get me over the learning curve of how to properly set up the 2977s for HylaFAX use. I agree, there's a lot required to get the 2977s to play nicely, and in fact to get them to play in Class 1 at all. I still have nightmares about the time we learned the Patton was faking rings right on HylaFAX's 6000ms intra-ring timer, ... thank heavens for HylaFAX's RingTimeout. I'm curious though, in an earlier message you wrote: Sending is also quite good, however, there are some quirks with the Patton firmware which need to be resolved for me to be completely delighted. Are these issues you refer to just cosmetic 'nice to haves' or do they actually impact the outbound success rate? Is the 2977's outbound in Class 1 as solid as the Mainpine or Multitech boards now? Our experience has shown that is not the case ... If your favor involves V.34 then it may be a while before the relevant patents expire. I know, that's a shame. Still, there will be many cases where V.34 won't be such a major loss and IAXmodem will make sense. Can't beat the pricetag! ;-) -Darren -- Darren Nickerson Senior Sales Support Engineer iFAX Solutions, Inc. www.ifax.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] +1.215.438.4638 x8106 +1.215.243.8335 (fax) ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
Darren Nickerson wrote: I'm curious though, in an earlier message you wrote: Sending is also quite good, however, there are some quirks with the Patton firmware which need to be resolved for me to be completely delighted. Are these issues you refer to just cosmetic 'nice to haves' or do they actually impact the outbound success rate? Is the 2977's outbound in Class 1 as solid as the Mainpine or Multitech boards now? Our experience has shown that is not the case ... Having worked extensively with modems such as MultiTechs and MainPines which use the Lucent/Agere Venus chipset, modems such as Comtrol RocketModems (II not I or III) that use the Rockwell/Conexant K56 chipset, and the Patton 2977 (which along with the Digi AccelePort RAS uses an ADI chipset) I can say unequivocally that the former two _can_ currently outperform the latter. But allow me to put that performance difference into perspective ... depending upon the locale I can see 99.9% success rates (ratio is pages without error divided by total pages received) with MultiTechs, Mainpines, and Comtrols. By comparison, the performance that I see with the Patton 2977 averages somewhere between 99.7% and 99.8% success ratio. That said, I have seen deployments of the former two chipsets underperform those statistics under normal conditions (say 98% to 99%) simply because they frequently send to or receive from a very problematic fax machine on the other end... and still the owners of those fax servers are quite happy with how those perform. In fact, I know of HylaFAX deployments that use USR modems and suffer at around 95% success ratio, and the problems even there aren't enough to motivate them to buy better modems. So the performance of the Patton 2977 shouldn't be considered bad... just not as good as I think it should be. Furthermore, when we're talking about digital phone lines and digital fax equipment, I should think that could eliminate 50% of the potential pitfalls right there... and if the other end is also using digtial then communication should be flawless, right? Well, that's my idea anyway... it doesn't work out that way. I'm a finicky faxer. One error in a thousand pages may seem extraordinary to some, but when thousands upon thousands of pages are handled every day the 0.1% is annoying if not frustrating. I could elaborate on the specific flaws in the Patton cards, I suppose, but this isn't the time or place. I suppose that I could also elaborate on flaws in just about any other fax modem hardware that I've used extensively, too. However, the trick isn't so much finding and using a flawless piece of equipment (because there isn't such a thing), but rather learning to avoid, fix, and deal with the issues as they appear. And this is why I have such a hard time favoring fax Class 2 and to a greater extent fax Class proxies like the Diva Server... because they take away so much of the control that is necessary to avoid, fix, and deal. My hope in IAXmodem is merely to extend that aspect of control into the DCE and DSP. Lee. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
[Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
Hi All, - I have Digium cards and given that the archives point out the Digium cards drop packets does anyone know what hardware would not do this? (i.e. Allow me to send outbound faxes) - If there is still an issue with the wctdm driver, does anyone know which asterisk/spandsp combo would work for sending outbound faxes? Thanks! ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
Frankly, I would recommend that you forget about trying to fax with Asterisk. Buy a good Multitech analog modem and install HylaFAX. Use the right tool for the job!!! Tom On Oct 11, 2005, at 10:32 AM, JC van der Walt wrote: Hi All, - I have Digium cards and given that the archives point out the Digium cards drop packets does anyone know what hardware would not do this? (i.e. Allow me to send outbound faxes) - If there is still an issue with the wctdm driver, does anyone know which asterisk/spandsp combo would work for sending outbound faxes? Thanks! ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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 ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
On Tue, 2005-10-11 at 17:01 -0400, Tom Rymes wrote: Frankly, I would recommend that you forget about trying to fax with Asterisk. Buy a good Multitech analog modem and install HylaFAX. Use the right tool for the job!!! Asterisk may be able to fax better in the somewhat near future. One of the things holding up T.38 support is the inability for asterisk to switch codecs on the fly. I am not saying that is the only thing, just one of the things. Well 1.2 is supposed to have better support in that regard, which means that work on T.38 can happen in a better way in the future. -- Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com Bret McDanel UK +44 870 340 4605 Germany +49 801 777 555 3402 US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200 FreeWorldDialup: 635378 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
Tom Rymes wrote: Frankly, I would recommend that you forget about trying to fax with Asterisk. Buy a good Multitech analog modem and install HylaFAX. Use the right tool for the job!!! Actually, you can use HylaFAX and Asterisk together. https://sourceforge.net/projects/iaxmodem/ Just be certain that your audio path doesn't run over any lossy medium (so run IAXmodem on your Asterisk box). Lee. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
On Tuesday 11 Oct 2005 22:41, Lee Howard wrote: Tom Rymes wrote: Frankly, I would recommend that you forget about trying to fax with Asterisk. Buy a good Multitech analog modem and install HylaFAX. Use the right tool for the job!!! Actually, you can use HylaFAX and Asterisk together. https://sourceforge.net/projects/iaxmodem/ Just be certain that your audio path doesn't run over any lossy medium (so run IAXmodem on your Asterisk box). I'll expand on what Tom meant Use a hardware based DSP for faxing not software based. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
Re: [Asterisk-Users] Which asterisk-friendly cards are fax-capable?
Bob Goddard wrote: On Tuesday 11 Oct 2005 22:41, Lee Howard wrote: Tom Rymes wrote: Use the right tool for the job!!! Use a hardware based DSP for faxing not software based. Why is a soft-DSP to be considered any less-capable than hardware ones? The reason why I put IAXmodem together in the first place was because of a growing frustration that I've had with hardware chipsets and the lack of attention that the manufacturers generally afford to resolving fax-related bugs in their products. There are some good-for-faxing hardware chipsets out there. Namely the Lucent/Agere Venus chipset and most of the spectrum of chipsets from the RCV144 to the K56 from Rockwell/Conexant were good. These two companies, however, appear to have moved on to other products. Getting DSP-related fixes for these chipsets (firmware updates dealing with DSP-related issues) is getting increasingly impossible and is bound to only get worse as manufacturers move farther and farther away from the less-lucrative fax market. And as far as I've tested of other chipsets (notably Cirrus Logic/Ambient/Intel, TI/3Com, and ADI) they all leave things to be desired, and they cannot be reliably used in large fax deployments desiring a near-100% (very near) fax-handling success ratio (yes, if you're okay with a 95% success rate go ahead and use a USR modem for faxing). As a fax server administrator it's very frustrating to hear people say but it works with my fax machine only to come to learn that the problem is related with the hardware chipset DSP and the best workaround that can be developed is not going to return results as well as that fax machine can. And when there are no fax-reliable hardware chipsets out there to use... then what? IAXmodem may not yet be as reliable as the Ageres or Conexant chipsets may be (it would surprise me to learn otherwise right now), but I think that with time it will improve, and my hope and goal is that it will become as reliable a DSP as any hardware chipset could be. Lee. ___ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- 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
