[cisco-voip] Fax Servers

[Voll, Scott]

So what is the best solution for Faxing when you're in a VoIP
environment?  

I really don't want to go back to H323 with 5 PRI's and half of my DID
are on an old PBX and half are on VoIP(not contiguous).  Since CCM is in
front, I just put in a Route pattern of XXXX and if it doesn't match a
IPT DID it forwards on.  I don't want to setup literally 100's of DID's.

ATA's work, but spotty at times.

Fax servers sound like they have issues also.

I have 5 different sites and almost all calls come in the main site so
buying a VG is not cost affective either.

Is everyone just spending money on POTS lines?

Scott

PS.  I have one or two Faxes at each location except the main site that
has about 12.

-----Original Message-----
From: Davis, Michael [mailto:Michael_Davis at eLoyalty.com] 
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2006 12:15 PM
To: Ortiz, Carlos; ciscovoip
Cc: Voll, Scott
Subject: RE: [cisco-voip] Fax Servers

I've been directly involved, from a service provider's standpoint,  with
a large customer's Xmedius integration for the last several months.
Here are a few issues with Xmedius.  YMMV.
 
First, like most FaxoIP vendors, they only support T.38/14.4kbps.  This
works great for G3 compression / throughput, since G3 is all that T.38
supports. This will cover you ~90% of the time.  However, for that other
10% of fax calls, many fax machines built when SG3 standard was new,
either fail to negotiate down or require operator intervention to do so.
IOS, as of 12.3T/12.4mainline, as well as older AS5xxx gateways with
DFCs try T.38, and fallback to passthrough mode on the assumption that
the 33.6kbps call is a modem call.  You may find that you will need
ingress gateways that force SG3 to negotiate G3 speeds. This enhanced
functionality is available in platforms supporting PVDM2s and 12.4T code
(I don't remember the specific rev., but CCO can hook you up.)
 
Second, Passthrough and cisco-relay are not options for Xmedius. So if
you are using VG248 or ATA devices as fax ingress points, they will not
inter-operate with Xmedius.
 
Third,  Xmedius H323 stack works well if you are doing peer-to-peer, ie
single dial-peer for faxes on ingress and Xmedius points to a single
egress gateway.  However, if you are leveraging gatekeepers,  you'll
find that 1) you cannot specify a zone for registration. Xmedius will
register as a terminal with the first zone configured in the gatekeeper
CLI.  You can restrict this behavior with zone subnet statements, but
that is a pain to maintain in a dynamic or service provider environment.
2) Inbound calls from ingress to Xmedius will not RAS properly.  Static
aliases will be required.
 
HTH,
 
Michael
 
 

________________________________

From: cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net on behalf of Ortiz, Carlos
Sent: Thu 5/25/2006 1:15 PM
To: ciscovoip
Cc: Voll, Scott
Subject: Re: [cisco-voip] Fax Servers



When I was looking at them the two choices I was looking at were
RightFax (Cisco OEM's this) and Xmedius.  I liked Xmedius because it is
a software only solution using your existing IP gateways (h.323).   I
tested it and it worked well, but we still have not implemented anything
because the project we needed it for fell through.

 

Carlos

 

________________________________

From: cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net
[mailto:cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Voll, Scott
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2006 1:58 PM
To: ciscovoip
Subject: [cisco-voip] Fax Servers

 

What kind of price range am I look at for a Fax server that ties in with
CM?  what are the best out there.  I have big xerox's that can do
scanning so I would like to tie it all together.

 

Can I use Unity as a fax server?  How does that work?

 

Scott