Hoping for some clarification. I would like to setup a NORMAL (not T.38) fax machine on an ATA, and have the ATA be a T.38 gateway to a remote asterisk (1.8) server, which is doing T.38 relay (passthru) to a provider. Some amount of googling today seems to imply that most ATAs are just T.38 passthru devices, and expect a T.38 capable fax machine, otherwise just fallback to ulaw (and mostly fail, in my experience so far). So does anyone use an ATA that actually does the gateway transcoding to a normal fax machine? Or am I barking up the wrong tree? Thanks! j
Hi Jeff, On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 08:18:53PM -0500, Jeff LaCoursiere wrote:> > Hoping for some clarification. I would like to setup a NORMAL (not > T.38) fax machine on an ATA, and have the ATA be a T.38 gateway to a > remote asterisk (1.8) server, which is doing T.38 relay (passthru) > to a provider. > > Some amount of googling today seems to imply that most ATAs are just > T.38 passthru devices, and expect a T.38 capable fax machine, > otherwise just fallback to ulaw (and mostly fail, in my experience > so far). > > So does anyone use an ATA that actually does the gateway transcoding > to a normal fax machine? Or am I barking up the wrong tree?I am using Cisco SPA-8000 and Cisco SPA-3102 as POTS(analog)<>T.38 gateway to an Asterisk 10 doing T.38<>RNIS gateway and it works fine (at least better than ulaw/alaw over the whole IP network). However I had to upgrade all ATA firmwares in order to get something working correctly. Sylvain -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: Digital signature URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20120925/db44d769/attachment.pgp>
Jeff Can you please clarify your layout? If you have an asterisk 1.8 (I would use 10 for this if possible) server why can't you just take the gateway call on that via a sip trunk. If you are coming in from and land line and want to do t.38 to the asterisk 1.8 server you would need a FXO t.38 gateway. Based on your description I am not sure what your sources are and what your final desired destination is. Please be specific with your response. We do t.38 all the time and have great success with it but the success is in the setup and control of the endpoints (gateways and ATAs) Thanks Bryant Zimmerman (ZK Tech Inc.) 616-855-1030 Ext. 2003 ---------------------------------------- From: "Jeff LaCoursiere" <jeff at sunfone.com> Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 9:20 PM To: "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion" <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com> Subject: [asterisk-users] T.38 gateway ATA Hoping for some clarification. I would like to setup a NORMAL (not T.38) fax machine on an ATA, and have the ATA be a T.38 gateway to a remote asterisk (1.8) server, which is doing T.38 relay (passthru) to a provider. Some amount of googling today seems to imply that most ATAs are just T.38 passthru devices, and expect a T.38 capable fax machine, otherwise just fallback to ulaw (and mostly fail, in my experience so far). So does anyone use an ATA that actually does the gateway transcoding to a normal fax machine? Or am I barking up the wrong tree? Thanks! j -- _____________________________________________________________________ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20120925/ca567b66/attachment.htm>
On 09/25/2012 03:54 AM, Sylvain Rochet wrote:> Hi Jeff, > > On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 08:18:53PM -0500, Jeff LaCoursiere wrote: >> Hoping for some clarification. I would like to setup a NORMAL (not >> T.38) fax machine on an ATA, and have the ATA be a T.38 gateway to a >> remote asterisk (1.8) server, which is doing T.38 relay (passthru) >> to a provider. >> >> Some amount of googling today seems to imply that most ATAs are just >> T.38 passthru devices, and expect a T.38 capable fax machine, >> otherwise just fallback to ulaw (and mostly fail, in my experience >> so far). >> >> So does anyone use an ATA that actually does the gateway transcoding >> to a normal fax machine? Or am I barking up the wrong tree? > I am using Cisco SPA-8000 and Cisco SPA-3102 as POTS(analog)<>T.38 > gateway to an Asterisk 10 doing T.38<>RNIS gateway and it works fine (at > least better than ulaw/alaw over the whole IP network). > > However I had to upgrade all ATA firmwares in order to get something > working correctly. > > Sylvain >Aha! That is what I am looking for. What firmware rev are you using on the 3102? So if I am parsing you correctly, the asterisk server the ATA is registered to is *also* a T.38 gateway, as you have directly connected ISDN? Cheers, j
---------------------------------------- From: "Jeff LaCoursiere" <jeff at sunfone.com> Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 11:05 AM To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] T.38 gateway ATA On 09/25/2012 09:26 AM, Bryant Zimmerman wrote: Jeff Can you please clarify your layout? If you have an asterisk 1.8 (I would use 10 for this if possible) server why can't you just take the gateway call on that via a sip trunk. If you are coming in from and land line and want to do t.38 to the asterisk 1.8 server you would need a FXO t.38 gateway. Based on your description I am not sure what your sources are and what your final desired destination is. Please be specific with your response. We do t.38 all the time and have great success with it but the success is in the setup and control of the endpoints (gateways and ATAs) Thanks Bryant Zimmerman (ZK Tech Inc.) 616-855-1030 Ext. 2003 ---------------------------------------- From: "Jeff LaCoursiere" <jeff at sunfone.com> Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 9:20 PM To: "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion" <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com> Subject: [asterisk-users] T.38 gateway ATA Hoping for some clarification. I would like to setup a NORMAL (not T.38) fax machine on an ATA, and have the ATA be a T.38 gateway to a remote asterisk (1.8) server, which is doing T.38 relay (passthru) to a provider. Some amount of googling today seems to imply that most ATAs are just T.38 passthru devices, and expect a T.38 capable fax machine, otherwise just fallback to ulaw (and mostly fail, in my experience so far). So does anyone use an ATA that actually does the gateway transcoding to a normal fax machine? Or am I barking up the wrong tree? Thanks! j -- _____________________________________________________________________ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users -- _____________________________________________________________________ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users Hi Bryan, To follow an inbound fax call, our intended setup would be: Our upstream sends a T.38 call to our border asterisk (1.8) server, which creates another T.38 call to the customer's hosted asterisk (1.8) instance, which creates another T.38 call to the ATA, which is over the Internet to their location. The ATA would do the transcoding (is that even the appropriate term in this case?) to T.30, to the FXS connected normal fax machine. Its that last bit that I am having trouble confirming is a feature of any mainstream ATA. When I dug into it yesterday it seems that the mainstream ATAs will passthru T.38, expecting the connected fax machine to work with T.38 natively. I can't depend on that. The asterisk servers are all remote, and though I could presumably do the gateway on the asterisk server I would then have a ulaw fax call over the internet to the ATA, which in my experience has not been very reliable. Of course I will need outbound faxing to follow the reverse path, letting the ATA turn the T.30 outbound fax call into T.38, which travels through our various asterisk servers to the upstream provider... So in a nutshell, is there anyone using an ATA as the *gateway* rather than passthru? I feel I am still not being clear... does that help? Thanks, j Jeff In your call stream you must make sure that all asterisk systems have the proper configurations for T.38 and that spandsp is loaded on the systems. Each peer entry must have the correct setup and the correct rtp port ranges must be set on all asterisk servers. Each server must have the correct configurations for their firewalls as well. I would flatten this to start. If possible connect the ATA's directly as a registration to your proxy. You will likely have better results. We have had the best luck with ATA's from audio codes and grandstream currently the HT-701, 702 have been working well. You must get the mix right and them keep it flat. Every time you allow user to drop an asterisk box between you and the ata you will give yourself a greater issues as they must become an asterisk t.38 expert to get the deployment to work or you must take it on. Hope this helps. T.38 works well when you get the right mix and control it. Bryant -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20120925/1a159b46/attachment.htm>
---------------------------------------- From: "Jeff LaCoursiere" <jeff at sunfone.com> Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 11:35 AM To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] T.38 gateway ATA On 09/25/2012 10:29 AM, Bryant Zimmerman wrote: ---------------------------------------- From: "Jeff LaCoursiere" <jeff at sunfone.com> Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 11:05 AM To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] T.38 gateway ATA On 09/25/2012 09:26 AM, Bryant Zimmerman wrote: Jeff Can you please clarify your layout? If you have an asterisk 1.8 (I would use 10 for this if possible) server why can't you just take the gateway call on that via a sip trunk. If you are coming in from and land line and want to do t.38 to the asterisk 1.8 server you would need a FXO t.38 gateway. Based on your description I am not sure what your sources are and what your final desired destination is. Please be specific with your response. We do t.38 all the time and have great success with it but the success is in the setup and control of the endpoints (gateways and ATAs) Thanks Bryant Zimmerman (ZK Tech Inc.) 616-855-1030 Ext. 2003 ---------------------------------------- From: "Jeff LaCoursiere" <jeff at sunfone.com> Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 9:20 PM To: "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion" <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com> Subject: [asterisk-users] T.38 gateway ATA Hoping for some clarification. I would like to setup a NORMAL (not T.38) fax machine on an ATA, and have the ATA be a T.38 gateway to a remote asterisk (1.8) server, which is doing T.38 relay (passthru) to a provider. Some amount of googling today seems to imply that most ATAs are just T.38 passthru devices, and expect a T.38 capable fax machine, otherwise just fallback to ulaw (and mostly fail, in my experience so far). So does anyone use an ATA that actually does the gateway transcoding to a normal fax machine? Or am I barking up the wrong tree? Thanks! j -- _____________________________________________________________________ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users -- _____________________________________________________________________ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: http://www.asterisk.org/hello asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users Hi Bryan, To follow an inbound fax call, our intended setup would be: Our upstream sends a T.38 call to our border asterisk (1.8) server, which creates another T.38 call to the customer's hosted asterisk (1.8) instance, which creates another T.38 call to the ATA, which is over the Internet to their location. The ATA would do the transcoding (is that even the appropriate term in this case?) to T.30, to the FXS connected normal fax machine. Its that last bit that I am having trouble confirming is a feature of any mainstream ATA. When I dug into it yesterday it seems that the mainstream ATAs will passthru T.38, expecting the connected fax machine to work with T.38 natively. I can't depend on that. The asterisk servers are all remote, and though I could presumably do the gateway on the asterisk server I would then have a ulaw fax call over the internet to the ATA, which in my experience has not been very reliable. Of course I will need outbound faxing to follow the reverse path, letting the ATA turn the T.30 outbound fax call into T.38, which travels through our various asterisk servers to the upstream provider... So in a nutshell, is there anyone using an ATA as the *gateway* rather than passthru? I feel I am still not being clear... does that help? Thanks, j Jeff In your call stream you must make sure that all asterisk systems have the proper configurations for T.38 and that spandsp is loaded on the systems. Each peer entry must have the correct setup and the correct rtp port ranges must be set on all asterisk servers. Each server must have the correct configurations for their firewalls as well. I would flatten this to start. If possible connect the ATA's directly as a registration to your proxy. You will likely have better results. We have had the best luck with ATA's from audio codes and grandstream currently the HT-701, 702 have been working well. You must get the mix right and them keep it flat. Every time you allow user to drop an asterisk box between you and the ata you will give yourself a greater issues as they must become an asterisk t.38 expert to get the deployment to work or you must take it on. Hope this helps. T.38 works well when you get the right mix and control it. Bryant Hmm, I would think I would need spandsp only if the asterisk server(s) would be gateways... is that not the case? If all I want the asterisk servers to do is passthru T.38, I assumed nothing was needed other than asterisk. Our asterisk servers are all SIP - we have no TDM connectivity. Still interested to know if your ATAs are being used as T.38 gateways? It sounds to me like you are just using ulaw calls to your ATAs. True? Thanks, j Jeff We actually do T.38 to the ATA we do allow fall back to T.30 but we push the T.38. As for spandsp you are correct it is only required if you are running the gateway functions. We have just become so use to customers running the gateway functions it is compiled and loaded as part of every install that may handle faxing in some case. In any case the closer you can get the ATA to the origination points the better off you are. Any delays in the T.38 invites can cause issues. This also opens up for flatter routes should you need to fall back to T.30 as well. 95% of our faxes flow T.38 and 5% fall back to T.30 when compatability is an issue. Bryant -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20120925/60fb3b07/attachment.htm>
---------------------------------------- From: "Jeff LaCoursiere" <jeff at sunfone.com> Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 11:40 AM To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] T.38 gateway ATA On 09/25/2012 10:34 AM, Sylvain Rochet wrote:> Hi Jeff, > > > On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 10:11:27AM -0500, Jeff LaCoursiere wrote: >> Aha! That is what I am looking for. What firmware rev are you >> using on the 3102? > 5.1.12 on SPA8000, 5.1.10(GW) on SPA3102, there is probably new releases > from Cisco, at the time I builded the T.38 network those were the latest > releases. > > Here is my SPA3102 configuration that I changed or are relevant toFAX/T.38:> > Network Jitter Level: very high > Jitter Buffer Adjustment: disable > Call Waiting Serv: no > Three Way Conf Serv: no > Echo Canc Enable: no > Echo Canc Adapt Enable: no > Echo Supp Enable: no > FAX CED Detect Enable: yes > FAX CNG Detect Enable: yes > FAX Passthru Codec: G711a > FAX Codec Symmetric: yes > FAX Passthru Method: NSE > DTMF Tx Mode: Normal > FAX Process NSE: yes > FAX Disable ECAN: yes > FAX Enable T38: yes > FAX Tone Detect Mode: caller or callee > > Note that my Asterisk is also configured to do Fax Tone Detect and ask > my ATA to switch to T.38 before my ATA ask Asterisk to do so, thereforce > I don't know if ATA Fax Tone Detection work correctly. > > >> So if I am parsing you correctly, the asterisk server the ATA is >> registered to is *also* a T.38 gateway, as you have directly connected >> ISDN? > Yes, this is also a T.38 gateway, my goal was to use T.38 from my ATA to > Asterisk over my non-isochronous IP network. T.38 gateway is supported > since Asterisk >= 10 and you don't need it since you are doing T.38 > passthru, but you need a device somewhere on the path able to detect the > FAX preamble and ask to switch the data channel from ulaw/alaw to T.38. > > > Sylvain >Thanks for the info Sylvain, that is just what I was looking for. Hoping to find that a lower model has the same feature set (don't really need the FXO port)... I am playing with an SPA122 right now, which seems to have the same options available you mention above. I'll load the latest firmware and report my experiences for posterity. Cheers, j Jeff The Grandstream HT-701 (Single Port FXS ATA) is less than $30.00 from dstro. Working well right now. Bryant -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20120925/04c44f62/attachment.htm>
On 09/25/2012 10:44 AM, Danny Nicholas wrote:> I would recommend the OBI110. > > > > -- > _____________________________________________________________________ > -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- > New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: > http://www.asterisk.org/hello > > asterisk-users mailing list > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-usersHad a chat with their support - apparently the OBI202 supports "T.38 Fax Relay", which is (I learned today) the term for the functionality I am looking for. The lower models do NOT support this, only passthru. Sadly the OBI202 is kind of pricy. And has an odd USB port... what would that be useful for I wonder? Cheers, j
-----Original Message----- From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Jeff LaCoursiere Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 2:49 PM To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] T.38 gateway ATA On 09/25/2012 10:44 AM, Danny Nicholas wrote:> I would recommend the OBI110. > > > > -- > _____________________________________________________________________ > -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- > New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs: > http://www.asterisk.org/hello > > asterisk-users mailing list > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-usersHad a chat with their support - apparently the OBI202 supports "T.38 Fax Relay", which is (I learned today) the term for the functionality I am looking for. The lower models do NOT support this, only passthru. Sadly the OBI202 is kind of pricy. And has an odd USB port... what would that be useful for I wonder? Cheers, j Wondered about the USB port myself. Looked this up - http://www.obihai.com/docs/OBi202DS.pdf ; you can hook the device up to your wifi network.
Jeff The grandstream units support both Relay and passthru depending on how you set them up. Thanks Bryant Zimmerman (ZK Tech Inc.) 616-855-1030 Ext. 2003 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20120925/3987eea2/attachment.htm>