Fax Question

[bsun99]

Currently I have two freephoneline nunmbers, one with a configurated ATA, the other with softphone setup.

I know freephoneline is not officially supporting the fax.

I tried to send and receive fax with ATA or softphone and have no success at all.

Question 1: Can I receive and send fax using ATA and regular fax maching? If yes, how?

Question 2: Can the softphone fpl receive fax? If yes, how?


Thanks for your help in advance.

[admin]

1) Yes, but BOTH need to support T.38tx method and your fax machine has to be set to "Ultra-Slow, Ultra-Fine, Photo" send method.

2) You can only receive faxes in one of two ways:

a) forward all voicemails to email, then your fax will be in your email with the attached PDF.
b) Hook up a fax machine and tweak your ata and fax for it to work

[bsun99]

Wow, thanks admins,

Now I can receive fax forwarded to my emails with both the phone numbers.

Later I will try to test to send fax.

[bsun99]

I tried sending fax with ATA and a regular fax machine and have had no luck so far.

My voip ATA is Sipura SPA 2100 and my fax machine is Brother brand.

Are there any important settings in ATA I should tweak for fax?

Codec? pass-thru?

[admin]

Well, while we do not provide technical support for faxing; I'll tell you that you must actually tweak your fax machine to transmit at a slower rate, superfine or photo should do.

[ethnicomm]

Set your fax baud rate to 9600.
Turn off/disable ECM (error correction mode).
Don't try faxing while connected wirelessly.

Hope this helps

[bsun99]

My fax machine is Brother Fax-560, and its baud rate is default to 9600 or max. It has ECM and no option availabe to be disabled.

Resolution is set to photo and overseas to ON when I try to send fax.

I have tried the fax machine and succeeded once sending a page fax, but most time it fails.

Any suggestion!

Thanks.

[Bloodsong]

My fax machine is Brother Fax-560, and its baud rate is default to 9600 or max. It has ECM and no option availabe to be disabled.

Resolution is set to photo and overseas to ON when I try to send fax.

I have tried the fax machine and succeeded once sending a page fax, but most time it fails.

Any suggestion!

Thanks.

Change it to be 9600 (period) not "or max", even slower than 9600 if it's an option for your fax machine. It sounds to me from the admin that the slower connection rate is necessary. If I had to wager a guess as to why. It's to give the ATA time to digitize the analog signal, or to modulate the digital signal.

[admin]

Your right on the button Bloodsong.

[bsun99]

Brother Fax 560 Specifications:

Modem Speed 9600/7200/4800/2400; Automatic Fallback
Resolution Horizontal203 dot/inch (8 dot/mm)
Vertical Standard 98 line/inch (3.85 line/mm
Fine, Photo 196 line/inch (7.7 line/mm)
Superfine, Photo (copy) 392 line/inch (15.4line/mm)

It looks like Baud rate has no problem even though I can not find where to change it. I can select Resolution, but nowhere to find to turn off ECM mode.

Question: Can I connect my computer's fax modem port to ATA's phone port in order to use my computer to send fax? Are there any virtual fax machine to be installed on a computer? or I can simple intall Windows XP Fax Service to send fax? If so, fax settings should be easily set up to fit voip faxing requirement, right?

And if so again, I can get rid of the Brother fax machine!

Thanks.

[admin]

Well there is always online fax services, that are free. The only downfall is you can only send 25 per day and one page at a time - But I'm sure you can find a program to send countless faxes at once

[bsun99]

Well there is always online fax services, that are free. The only downfall is you can only send 25 per day and one page at a time - But I'm sure you can find a program to send countless faxes at once

I do not use fax quite often, using free online fax service is a good option, and actually I sometimes use faxzero's free online fax service.

There may be a better way ...

I googled and found faxback's "Free VoIP Plug-in for Microsoft Fax" ( http://download.cnet.com/Free-VoIP-Plug ... 66854.html ) to use windows fax console to send fax via computer -> ATA .

I will try it to see if it works. If someone else has already used it, please let us know how it works out.

[Bloodsong]

Thanks for the testing bsun,
By the end of this thread, maybe we'll have enough material to right an FAQ on "(not-supported) FreePhoneLine Fax operations."

[bsun99]

Thanks for the testing bsun,
By the end of this thread, maybe we'll have enough material to right an FAQ on "(not-supported) FreePhoneLine Fax operations."

I would like to say that I have successfully sent fax using PC.

Connnection: PC Fax Modem -> ATA
Program: Windows XP Microsoft Fax Console
Modem properties: set to 9600 bps (even though bps is not the same thing as baud rate)

Most time one page fax is 99% successful, but there are a lot of fails for more than one page fax. At least we know it works.

[bsun99]

I can send fax using my Brother Fax 560 now after I found I could go to 'Maintenance Mode' to disable ECM. I can even send fax with Standard resolution.

The key points really are:

Baud Rate: 9600
ECM: Disabled

Thanks for your guys' help!!!

[Bloodsong]

I can send fax using my Brother Fax 560 now after I found I could go to 'Maintenance Mode' to disable ECM. I can even send fax with Standard resolution.

The key points really are:

Baud Rate: 9600
ECM: Disabled

Thanks for your guys' help!!!

And thank you for yours,
This "Maintenance Mode" issue may come up with other future attempts at faxing over VoIP from other users, Remember you saw the fix here first folks!

[mrken]

Does Freephoneline.ca support the T.38 fax codec?

How reliable is the fax-to-email feature?

Thank you!

[admin]

Though the system itself is capable of it, we do not provide support for the T.38 codec.

I've been using the fax to email service and it's been working flawlessly - What you must do though is make sure voicemail to email is set to Forward only, and not Copy.

[mrken]

Though the system itself is capable of it, we do not provide support for the T.38 codec.

I've been using the fax to email service and it's been working flawlessly - What you must do though is make sure voicemail to email is set to Forward only, and not Copy.

When you say no support, do you mean no support is provided by customer service? A capable SIP adapter can successfully negotiate the T.38 codec for both inbound and outbound calls?

[admin]

Yes, I mean no official technical support from the Freephoneline staff. The forums however are filled with incredibly knowledgeable and helpful people who would be willing to help I'm sure.

A capable SIP adapter can successfully negotiate the T.38 codec rxd as well as txd.

[admin]

Yes, I mean no official technical support from the Freephoneline staff. The forums however are filled with incredibly knowledgeable and helpful people who would be willing to help I'm sure.

A capable SIP adapter can successfully negotiate the T.38 codec rxd as well as txd.

[mrken]

Yes, I mean no official technical support from the Freephoneline staff. The forums however are filled with incredibly knowledgeable and helpful people who would be willing to help I'm sure.

A capable SIP adapter can successfully negotiate the T.38 codec rxd as well as txd.

Thank you Kris for the information! I had not expected Freephoneline to support T.38.

Does the SIP server force the T.38 codec upon detecting the fax tones even with non-T.38 capable adapters? My current VoIP provider disconnects G.711 calls that cannot negotiate the T.38 codec...

[admin]

I'll have to get the full story for you tomorrow, but I can tell you that upon detecting a fax tone the server tries it's primary negotiation of T.38 but if unsuccessful, where be it that the device on the receiving end does not support T.38, defaults to negotiating using uLaw.

[mrken]

I'll have to get the full story for you tomorrow, but I can tell you that upon detecting a fax tone the server tries it's primary negotiation of T.38 but if unsuccessful, where be it that the device on the receiving end does not support T.38, defaults to negotiating using uLaw.

Thank you for your help!

With my existing VoIP service, my home (consumer) router has trouble handling incoming ReINVITE packets for some reason, so the ATA cannot successfully negotiate T.38. Which is why I would prefer staying at G.711u if the server or ATA cannot successfully negotiate T.38.

[joshuascottpaul]

the forward to voice mail works great

also for testing hp test fax service is a great tool to see that send / receive is working

go to http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/docu ... =c00259105

Send a one page black and white text fax to 1-888-hpfaxme (1-888-473-2963).