PBX in a FLASH and FAX services

[Nobbie]

Due to the state of the global economy I have a number of clients who are thrilled about the financial savings that can be derived by a PIAF system. These clients have offices in the US, primarily in the NY area, with head offices being in a number of far flung countries around the world.

A large part of their monthly expenditure goes to voice, but an even larger chunk to faxing both ways. One of the more expensive locations costs over US$1.25/min.

They have asked whether faxing would be possible with this system as well. So I guess my question is whether reliable faxing can be done with a PBX on each end and an FXS card in each with the fax machine connected. I have been to the green side and lurked around in here as well but I don't seem to find anything conclusive.

Will this work reliably enough to give an authoritative yes to my clients? If so, which FXS card would you recommend and how would all of this be configured?

I would appreciate every bit of advice.

 

[jades]

Hello,
I'm also located in NY (NYC).Anyways, to answer your question,

Technically there is a way to fax local and internationally with Voice over IP but it is not guaranteed to work. I have a voip fax set up that works only 95% of the time. If they don't mind expecting to have to resend their faxes once in a blue moon due to a fax failure, then here is a solution.

Forget about PBX In a flash. That will make it worse. Buy a cheap grandstream telephone adapter and set up a voip account with www.teliax.com. Local calls are 1 cent a minute. long distance is 2 cents and international varies. There is a chart available for that, but I doubt it's close to the $1.00 range per minute.

Set up an account with teliax and program the credentials on the grandstream adapter and make sure you TURN OFF the option where it says tp "register" the extension. We are programming this to work with outbound faxing.
Set up your grandstream to point to nyc.teliax.net. If you are in New York City like I am, 95% of the outbound faxes will definitely go through.

For inbound faxing, I suggest fax via email to guarantee that ALL faxes with arrive. With teliax you can pay $5 per month for the phone # and 2 cents per minute for the inbound calls. Then you can set it up where the phone number forwards to the fax via email feature.

Good luck and PM me if you have any inquiries.

 

[Boolah]

For inbound faxing, I suggest fax via email to guarantee that ALL faxes with arrive. With teliax you can pay $5 per month for the phone # and 2 cents per minute for the inbound calls. Then you can set it up where the phone number forwards to the fax via email feature.

Another alternative for inbound faxing is OneSuite. You can get a local (US) phone number and unlimited inbound faxes for $1.00/month.

 

[wardmundy]

Teliax doesn't have a monopoly on reliable faxing. PBX in a Flash works well. We use it all the time. There is a message thread with lots of tips and tricks, and Nerd Vittles has an article as does the Best of Nerd Vittles site on how to set it up for reliable faxing.

Configuration is a no-brainer now. The real keys to reliable faxing are ULAW and a reliable, high-quality provider of which we have now listed about a half dozen in the Best of Nerd Vittles article.

Finally, with respect to 95% reliability, keep in mind that faxing has ALWAYS been about 95% reliable. The technology sends analog noise to create images on paper. That's never going to be a 100% proposition with copper phone lines of varying degrees of quality... worldwide.

If you really want to improve reliability, send faxes locally to a PBX in a Flash extension where they will be converted to PDF documents. Then email the PDF documents to other end. And, incidentally, if you have a PBX in a Flash system on both ends of the call or at least have a SIP or IAX termination point at one end, all of the calls (fax and voice) will always be free, just like Skype... but smarter!

 

[Nobbie]

Thank you everyone for the informative responses. I have read every one of the references you linked to and learnt quite a bit more about internet a-la-voip faxing. As I had initially stated a number of my clients have foreign offices and a large chunk of their international calling is eaten up by international faxing. I know I know, bad habits die hard and they are not too thrilled about converting to pdf and emailing.

I'm a network guy and not into programing in any sense of the word, so I will leave that up to the pros in here. However, I have been thinking about this all weekend and based on what I know about networking and what I was able to glean from the info you provided I came up with a plausible scenario in my mind. Trust me, I think this might be the killer add-on for PIAF.

OK here goes.....

My scenario involves two PIAF servers, one at each end with an FXS card installed, and a fax machine as well, on each end.

In one of the links provided, I recall reading that a fax can be sent via email after it was received from the fax machine connected to the FXS card. I also read that you can SSH from a windows application to the PIAF box. We also know that you can 'get' a file for install or update purposes via the internet. We also know that we can send a file from PIAF via SMTP to email the pdf file created from the fax. Therefor we can both send and receive files.

What has kept me up is why we can't piece all these parts together and create a reliable fax system between two PIAF machines. Here's how:

Two locations, A and B

1.) Fax machine connected to PIAF 'A' sends fax to PIAF B at ext 328? (connected to FXS card). Fax is converted to pdf in Outgoing folder.

2.) PIAF 'A' establishes SSH connection to PIAF 'B' and sends pdf file to Incoming folder on PIAF 'B'

3.) PIAF 'B' detects new file in Incoming folder converts to fax and sends out to FXS extension.

4.) Fax machine prints fax. Voila!!!

This of course only works between these two locations, but what about multiple locations each with their own PIAF all connected via IAX trunks. The routing to the extensions will already be known (IP addresses of trunks) so all you would have to do is dial that number in your fax machine and press send. Of course there needs to be some tie ins to make it all work.

This is where the programing pros come in to make it all happen. From a network point of view its simple to permit firewall/network access for the relevant IP addresses and forward the necessary ports.

I don't know, maybe no one ever thought of it from this angle before, but this is what jumped out at me based on my client needs.

This is my contribution.
What do you think?

 

[MyKroFt]

Why convert to .pdf - fax in its native form is a .tif file correct?

Just send the .tif files back and forth and skip the convert to/from pdf file...

 

[Nobbie]

Well I guess if it's a tiff file, then that's what it can be. I'm not a pro on the format the fax takes. What really caught my attention is the possibility of doing it between two PIAF and fax machines.