[VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?

[Brandon Lehmann]

We have encountered many of the problems expressed in this thread. We had no problem (close to 100% success rate) sending and receiving faxes using uLaw in and out of our server cluster; however, passing those calls to the customer ATA devices resulted in a large number of problems (25% success rate if we were lucky). No matter what we did, the latency and packet loss killed the handshake or dropped the fax part way through the transmission. After months of testing, we were able to blame the "last-mile" network connections.

What we ended up doing was capturing all faxes in our cluster with a hylafax server and then passing it on to the recipient. In the case of inbound, the call comes in uLaw to our cluster, is passed to the hylafax server which queues the fax, and then forwards it to the end-user ATA via uLaw. Outbound works the same way but in the opposite direction. Call routing for the ATA forces all calls (we tell our customers that they are Fax only extensions) to hylafax iaxmodems, hylafax queues up the fax, and then forwards it out to the unknown. Yes, this took a bit of scripting and playing with dialplans; however, the result is amazing. We are now seeing a success rate close to 99% (from what we can tell, the only failures are the result of network congestion on the user end). As such, we have ignored T.38 all together as we experienced more problems on the ATA side than we cared to handle. 

We have found that our customers also love the email2fax & fax2email gateway we added when we implemented this service. Furthermore, they enjoy the fact that they can log into the web site and pull up copies of every fax they have sent or received. Needless to say, by fixing one problem, we have created an additional revenue stream in the process.

Some food for thought...

---

Brandon Lehmann  CCNA, CCAI, CFOT, Net+, A+, Security+
BitRadius, LLC
510 Court Street
Fremont, Ohio 43420
Email: brandon at bitradius.com
Web: http://www.bitradius.com
Phone: 567-255-3610 x9500
Toll-Free: 888-608-7253 x9500
Fax: 567-255-3611

-----Original Message-----
From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of David Hiers
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 1:32 AM
To: Nathan Anderson
Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org
Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?

We terminate our T38 in-house and send t30/711 to our upstream
carriers.  It works pretty well, but it's not a panacea.

In general, we find that T38 fixes some problems, moves some problems
from the far end to the fax/ata interface, and invents entirely new
ones.

++ on Alex's long fax experience.


David



On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 8:53 PM, Nathan Anderson <nathana at fsr.com> wrote:
> So, do T.38 only last-mile to the ATA, then dump it back into the audible
> domain at our own SBC and pass it to our termination provider as a G.711u
> call?  Interesting idea...I'll chew on that for a bit.  Thanks.
>
> -- Nathan
>
> ________________________________
> From: Peter Childs [mailto:PChilds at internode.com.au]
> Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 6:59 PM
> To: Nathan Anderson
> Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org
>
> Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?
>
>
> Slightly off topic but from spec sheet the new transcoding NUIs in the
> low-end ACME SBCs (3820/4500?) in theory can handle T.38 to T.30(ulaw/alaw)
> interop, so you might be able to 'wrangle' it yourself.
>
>
> --
>  Peter Childs - Voice Engineer
>  Internode/Agile
>  Ph: 08 8228 2380 Mb: 0406 388 405 Fax: 08 8235 6801
>
> On 13/12/2011, at 12:26 PM, Nathan Anderson wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> New to the list.  I work for a regional broadband ISP who is looking to also
> become an ITSP.
>
> We are looking for a good SIP termination provider with reasonable rates to
> all of North America that also happens to guarantee T.38 gateway support for
> 100% of calls.
>
> Currently, we are using FlowRoute.  We are happy with the service, but the
> odds of us hitting a gateway (through one of their upstreams) that will
> accept our T.38 re-INVITE are about 50/50...not very good.
>
> We tried Gafachi, but that was not a good experience.  Their rate table is
> all kinds of screwed-up.
>
> The only other one I've been able to find in my searches is Alcazar
> Networks.  Anybody have any first-hand experience with them who can vouch
> for them as well as their T.38 support for the wholesale termination
> product?
>
> Other recommendations are also welcome, as well.  Although we may someday go
> down the road of loading an LCR table into our SBC, at this point we are
> looking for a single solid termination provider that will handle 100% of our
> outbound call volume (a mix of voice and fax); we can fall-back to FlowRoute
> as a backup solution if the primary provider goes down.
>
> Thanks a million,
>
> --
> Nathan Anderson
> First Step Internet, LLC
> nathana at fsr.com
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>
>
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