I wrote a week or two ago about a problem I was having with a TDM400P with 2 FXS. The problem was reliable fax transfers. There were often slow or had communication failures during transmission. Richard replied to my post and told me this is an ongoing problem that might have a solution in the weeks to come. However, I was wondering if anyone had any alternate solutions for faxing with an actual fax machine (not creating a fax server) that have worked well. Basically my setup is a PRI coming in to my Asterisk box. I have two DID's that I would like to assign to my fax lines. My requirement is that I can use a standard fax machine to recv and send faxes. It is a pretty simple setup. If you have an solutions that have worked well for you in the past, I would love to hear them. I currently have the DID's forwarded to a single POTS line we had laying around. This works but I can't use the fax machines to receive individually. Also if the folks working on the TDM card missing frames issue need someone to run tests or troubleshoot I am willing to do so. - Aaron
> I wrote a week or two ago about a problem I was having with a TDM400P > with 2 FXS. The problem was reliable fax transfers. There were often > slow or had communication failures during transmission. > > Richard replied to my post and told me this is an ongoing problem that > might have a solution in the weeks to come. However, I was wondering > if anyone had any alternate solutions for faxing with an actual fax > machine (not creating a fax server) that have worked well. > > Basically my setup is a PRI coming in to my Asterisk box. I have two > DID's that I would like to assign to my fax lines. My requirement is > that I can use a standard fax machine to recv and send faxes. It is a > pretty simple setup. > > If you have an solutions that have worked well for you in the past, I > would love to hear them. I currently have the DID's forwarded to a > single POTS line we had laying around. This works but I can't use the > fax machines to receive individually. Also if the folks working on > the TDM card missing frames issue need someone to run tests or > troubleshoot I am willing to do so.No resolution on the TDM card as yet. Lots of folks have used the small Cisco ATA186 or Sipura products to support analog fax as long as your incoming calls are arriving via a PRI, and that T1/E1 interface has been configured to properly sync with the telco. The sip definitions "must" use a g711 codec for that to work correctly. (Outgoing faxes would need to be over the PRI as well.) Alternatively for incoming faxes, I've moved to an external fax service (very inexpensive) for inbound faxes. They now arrive in pdf format, can be forwarded anywhere, junk faxes deleted without wasting paper/toner, printed as needed, etc. Rich
> If you have an solutions that have worked well for you in the past, I > would love to hear them.On one of my customer sites, I had exactly the same problem. One PRI to the Telco, local SIP phones and a 4 port FXS TDM400P card. The faxes were totally unreliable and I couldn't do anything to fix it. After that I did a lot of experimenting and found a solution. I used an ISDN BRI card (Sirrix 4 port BRI, Junghanns QuadBRI or OctoBRI work fine although I vote for a Sirrix one) and I hooked up an ISDN S0 to analog converter to it (DeTeWe TA33clip works fine). It had a few glitches, but with a newer versions bristuff and/or newer Sirrix card drivers everything works like a charm. Ivan