Anyone do any Fax over IP?

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Ratfester

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What kind of software/hardware do you use? For compliance issues at work everyone needs to be able to send and receive faxes via email. It's only about 30-40 users and not a whole lot of volume so were trying to be cheap. We use PBXtra from Fonality as our VoIP service and currently have 4 T1's but switching to fiber soon most likely. I'm not real familiar with VoIP but it looks like they bought appliances, they seem locked down so I don't think we can change anything on them. We're currently looking at GFI Faxmaker. Is this something that is easy and inexpensive to implement or are we better off sticking a couple modems in a server and using analog lines? Thanks in advance for any input!
 
Ratfester said:
What kind of software/hardware do you use? For compliance issues at work everyone needs to be able to send and receive faxes via email. It's only about 30-40 users and not a whole lot of volume so were trying to be cheap. We use PBXtra from Fonality as our VoIP service and currently have 4 T1's but switching to fiber soon most likely. I'm not real familiar with VoIP but it looks like they bought appliances, they seem locked down so I don't think we can change anything on them. We're currently looking at GFI Faxmaker. Is this something that is easy and inexpensive to implement or are we better off sticking a couple modems in a server and using analog lines? Thanks in advance for any input!
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I once saw a faxmachine back in 1981 :eek::eek:

Why not do scan to pdf ? then email ?
 
We are using a company to do this for us that charges per page and will cater to our needs. Lookup fax pipe and see if you like em
 
We use myfax at work to receive faxes. It works fairly well. We've had a few outages with them this year already though...
 
Faxing over Voip aka FOIP its always going to be hit and miss so I have done it over vonage its ok but again its hit and miss over voip. Old job I was working at I had to work on a windows server 2003 and just using there built in software then it was going out to a PBXtra from Fonality then to PSTN network.

If you unto linux servers take look at: http://www.ifax.com/products/hylafax.html or http://www.hylafax.org/content/Main_Page
 
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dashpuppy said:
I once saw a faxmachine back in 1981 :eek::eek:

Why not do scan to pdf ? then email ?
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I am in a VoIP IT position and the day faxing goes away, I will be throwing a party.

In a more serious response, there's a lot of reasons legally why faxing is still around. I remember being at this one customer of ours, and people would literally sit next to each other, but for person B to see a document person A has, it had to be faxed to person B......
 
We still have POTS lines for our main fax machines (sales, customer service, HR), as well as eFax for about 40-50 people.
 
I have used Extrafax for Lotus Domino and Zetafax

I have to say, Extrafax is damn slick but you have to deal with Lotus Domino lol

Zeta fax is not half bad

There are free open source solutions you can use.

Fonality if you purchased the Appliance you may be able to get an Frx card for it and do faxing through there
 
We use RightFax mostly, and have analog lines for the remainder of our MFDs.
 
If the volume is low save yourself the headache and use an online service like myfax or faxpipe. You might be able to cobble something together but do you want to be on the hook at 5am on a Saturday when it stops working? With the pricing so low and the simplicity to set up I would use an online service personally.
 
Doesn't fonality have something built in? fax from email?

When we used shoretel we used Multitech faxfinder.. Great appliance
 
/usr/home said:
We use myfax at work to receive faxes. It works fairly well. We've had a few outages with them this year already though...
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Yup, we use myfax to so our web app can use the API for sending/recieving faxes. We lost a LOT of money during those outtages, pissed a lot of clients off, and looked idiots thanks to them. I would avoid myfax if possible and find someone else.
 
Fonality does have their own service but it's pretty expensive. We were hoping to just have a server register with the PBXtra but they won't add the server MAC address for us, oh well. Good stuff, thanks guys.
 
I recommend you check out FaxLogic (www.faxlogic.com). They have an API and do pretty much everything you want "in the cloud". I know of two of at least our customers that have gone to them. One was using RightFax with their own servers, T1s, etc. and the other was using MyFax. They basically converted everything to use FaxLogic's API. Based on the significant reduction in support calls I've seen since then, I'd say it's working pretty well. :)
 
Our VOIP technicians bitch all day about people who fax over VOIP. Fax is just designed for analog lines. Uncompressed VOIP traffic using a proper priority-based QoS policy can work with fax from what I was told. My VOIP training is in a month or two though so I guess I'll know more then.
 
FAX over VoIP is fraught with perils- at the very least you will get lower transmission speed than analog POTS lines. I like MetroFAX. I think for your size and needs hosted fax might be worth a look.
 
Electrofreak said:
Our VOIP technicians bitch all day about people who fax over VOIP. Fax is just designed for analog lines. Uncompressed VOIP traffic using a proper priority-based QoS policy can work with fax from what I was told. My VOIP training is in a month or two though so I guess I'll know more then.
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Its not that its just designed for analog lines...its an old technology that hasn't been updated in a long time. Dealing with fax issues can be tedious and if its a carrier problem...good luck dealing with the carrier...most of the carriers and technicians I dealt with when it comes to any kind of issue including faxing, they think there network is perfect and no issues exist.

I seen so many weird issues with faxing and my favorite scenario I saw...customer was doing T38 faxing...anytime between 8am - 6pm receiving faxes will not work but sending will always work. Anytime not in that time range receiving faxes worked flawlessly. They had a proper QoS setup and we proved it was on the carrier end. Carrier refused to acknowledge so the customer eventually dropped the carrier and never had issues since with the new carrier they went with.
 
FoIP sucks balls, however we have had it working in the past. We dumped it and installed one main POTS line at each site for die hard faxers. And signed up for InterFAX http://www.interfax.net/en to handle the rest. Scan to email and fax that shit, done. They have good pricing and can do blanket domain authorization for users *@yourdomain.com or [email protected], etc.

In the end we cut our bill more than half, which was good enough for me.

The only thing we use ATA's for now is cordless phones. And that will probably go away with some of the newer stuff we're going to put in. So we'll end up only having an ATA for the paging Valcom thing.
 
Lazy_Moron said:
Its not that its just designed for analog lines...its an old technology that hasn't been updated in a long time. Dealing with fax issues can be tedious and if its a carrier problem...good luck dealing with the carrier...most of the carriers and technicians I dealt with when it comes to any kind of issue including faxing, they think there network is perfect and no issues exist.

I seen so many weird issues with faxing and my favorite scenario I saw...customer was doing T38 faxing...anytime between 8am - 6pm receiving faxes will not work but sending will always work. Anytime not in that time range receiving faxes worked flawlessly. They had a proper QoS setup and we proved it was on the carrier end. Carrier refused to acknowledge so the customer eventually dropped the carrier and never had issues since with the new carrier they went with.
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I remember a bit back one of my coworkers was going back and forth between HP and Cox because one of their multifunctions would act up. HP eventually said it doesn't work well with the digital "analog" line Cox uses. Go figure.
 
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