VoIP Solution for Faxing?

mbathgate asks: "In the world of residential academia, cell phone proliferation is so immense that at many schools they've pulled the plug on landline long distance service, including mine. I have a cell phone, but I can't fax through it, and dialing 29 digits for every fax is a real pain (few faxes are local, especially in Los Angeles). I need a finger-saving solution, but I don't want a web or email-based service, for a number of different reasons, mostly legal and security-related (please save me the flaming - the decision is made). VoIP looks very attractive to me, though, with a 100baseTX port in my room connected to a huge pipe. Slashdot has covered switching to VoIP before, but the focus has been mostly voice calls. I've hunted around on a few different sites, but haven't come across anything which assures me that VoIP would work for my situation. I need a solution for high quality outgoing calls to landlines which can connect to my existing fax machine (RJ11 port). It must be Mac OS X compatible or OS-independent. An incoming number would be nice, since it would let me receive faxes without being there to manually press 'Receive', but considering our anal-retentive firewall policies, getting it to work outgoing would be a good start. Does Slashdot have some experience with faxing via VoIP that they'd like to share?"

Comments

Not looking very hard are you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not, you have posted to Ask Slaskdot.

VoIP services that run 64kbps and up mostly support faxing.

VoIP Faing from modems is less reliable because modems tend to be looser with the spec / timing then hardware faxes.

A search of any VoIP forum would have turned up these results.

Re:Better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

whoops, I should have read the story better

I don't want a web or email-based service, for a numer of different reasons

Oh well, good bye, karma!

Can't read?

[rthille]

http://www.vonage.com/features_fax.php

vonage works with FAX machines.

Re:Can't read?

[gad_zuki!]

I've done this with vonage and also called a dial-up through it and connected at 14k or so. The connection didn't last long but it was interesting to see that the VoIP protocols didn't consider modem tones 'noise.'

Re:Better idea

[no longer myself]

This is /. remember? We like it complicated. ;-)

What's so hard?

[addaon]

How much are you faxing? Kinkos and the equivalent will fax for about 20 cents a page... so you can do 100 pages a month for $20. If you're faxing more than that -- and I can't imagine why, these days -- why not just get a cell phone with a fax port? From your message, I assume you already have a cell phone; a $50 one time investment (these phones are pretty cheap on ebay and such; they're generally pretty old) and no additional monthly fee seems pretty good.

Re:What's so hard?

[cei]

Sorry, local faxes at Kinko's are a dollar a page. Long distance? More. So you can do 100 pages a month for $100...

Re:What's so hard?

[addaon]

Wow... that's gone up. In any case, find a local copy shop that does it cheaper; or, if that's too hard, the tradeoff to a one-time $50 investment juts comes earlier.

Re:What's so hard?

[cei]

Nah, actually it's been the same since at least 1989... (worked at a Kinko's while I was in college...) Copy prices have gone up, surprisingly, but the fax remains the same.

Re:What's so hard?

[orakle]

any idea what the make/model of such a cell phone is?

Re:What's so hard?

[addaon]

No idea. I know my first nynex-branded car phone had it, though, and that must have been around '92 or so.

eFax

[GreenKiwi]

What about eFax?

http://www.efax.com/

Do all your faxing over the internet. Not sure about security, but I'd imagine that they've worked something out.

kiwi

Re:eFax

[duffbeer703]

The other problem with eFax is spam... I had a paid account long ago and am still getting 3-4 emails a week about upgrading my service or offers from "trusted partners"

highly obnoxious.

eFax sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried out their free efax service awhile back. Okay, so a free service you get a number in an area code no ones ever heard of. fine. but the damn thing didnt work. Faxes never came. Faxs took 2 weeks to show up in my email. never again.

Locality

[toast0]

just because you have to do ten digit dialing doesn't make it non-local.

Of course, a lot of the area you might need to fax with is going to be intra-lata/zone3/local toll/whatever the hell they're calling it now, where on a typical residential line it would be more than a local call, but not go through your long distance carrier. I have no idea if you can make those calls or not, but you can give somebody a headache by asking them :)

quicknet.net

[pg133]

[NOTE: This is not a recommendation since I have never used their products]

You could check out:

INTERNET PHONEJACK

"With the Internet PhoneJACK, you can use your familiar telephone (including your cordless phone) to make and receive Internet phone calls. You can plug your standard analog telephone, fax machine or headset into the Internet PhoneJACK and keep your Internet phone calls private."

They appear to support linux

or on the same website:

iprint2Fax

Re:quicknet.net

[michael_cain]

[NOTE: This is not a recommendation since I have never used their products]

You could check out:

INTERNET PHONEJACK

Not particularly relevant to the fax issue, but their echo cancellation used to be spectacularly good. When I was doing applied research work at a large phone company, we tested an early version of the hardware that we picked up at a trade show using our prototype voice-over-IP software and open-air microphones and speakers. In full-duplex mode, we could place a microphone within a couple inches of the speaker cone without getting echoes or feedback -- a test that commercial echo cancellers costing hundreds of dollars routinely failed. For at least a couple of years we used this as part of a demo for senior executives intended to show just how good voice-over-IP could be.

Re:quicknet.net

[Omega1045]

Thanks for the link. I have been looking for a solution like this for my sat rec. Dish charges me $5/mo for not having a landline. Time to set up one of my old PCs with the internet phone jack!

eFax

[attaboy]

I'm not sure about the Mac client, but eFax is fantastic. For a while it was free, too.

Really a non-issue

[jaredcat]

Most modern VoIP equipment automagically supports faxings. Its built into the spec for pretty much any H323 or SIP device that you are going to buy that has come out in the past few years.

You'd be suprised how many of your so-called analog or land-line calls are being VOIPed around the Internet anyway. The company I work at (a mid-sized telecommunications carrier) uses fairly standard equipment for this-- Cisco AS5850s and 7206VXRs among other things... Its really quite transparent to the end user when the call is being transported VoIP, both for voice and for faxes.

Net2Phone does fax (once again)

[Degrees]

First they had it, then they dropped it, and now its back again. Net2Phone CommCenter

Doesn't receive faxes, and is a Windows-only client. Looks like $0.10 per page.

Voice? over IP for faxes?

[foniksonik]

Why would you want this? Why not use a fax emulator over normal IP...

Seriously... VOIP seems like an abstraction over an abstraction... it's all data, why not go straight to the source so to speak and simply send out a fax signal directly?

Re:Voice? over IP for faxes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, this would be fine if he was building an infrastructure for a service.

How does it help him call other fax machines?

online FAX services

[ajagci]

There are plenty of on-line FAX services. They generally forward FAXes they receive to an E-mail address (as a multipage TIFF file), and they let you send FAXes through their web site, usually in text, PDF, TIFF, and MS Word format.

all web services suck at times

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, eFax has had occasional problems even with their paid service. Their free service is probably under-provisioned (not a smart sales move, but what can you do). But I tried a couple of other services and they were no better and actually were more limited in terms of features.

Overall, I have found eFax to work reliably enough and a good alternative to a traditional FAX machine. After all, it's not like regular FAX machines are terribly reliable either: they run out of paper, they drop connections, they run out of toner, they break, someone uses them for telephone calls, etc.

Re:all web services suck at times

[Bluetrust25]

For my business, eFax ($12.95/mo) made more sense economically over a year than the cost of purchasing a fax machine (~$8/mo) and leasing a land line (~$25/mo.) I haven't had any problems with the service except for the occasional fax spam, which isn't eFax's fault.

Another option

[squiggleslash]

Rather than trying an over-IP option, you might want to change cellphone provider to one that allows faxing. This is probably the easiest - your phone will look to OS X like a fax modem, so it's fairly simple to send 'em.

Vonage or some such.

[Halvard]

is probably the easiest.

Your comment about needing a finger-saving solution, but I don't want a web or email-based service, for a number of different reasons, mostly legal and security-related (please save me the flaming - the decision is made). doesn't make sense though and this isn't a flame. Unless you are hosting the opposite ends and encrypting, you still might as well just send a post card since you've thrown security out the window.

Schmooze your department secretary

[raider_red]

If you're only sending an occasional fax, you might be able to convince your department secretary or some other school official to let you use their fax. It helps also if you can do them a favor, like fix their computer for them.

Also, if you're faxing resumes, try your campus career center.

I thought that we had this covered already...

[Wicked187]

What about e-mail?

NO

[losycompresion]

Nice try but read the whole story first slick "I don't want a web or email-based service"

Re:NO

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer has already been posted. Browse the Vonage website. They offer a SECOND line for Fax purposes for a mere $5 more per month. The Cisco ATA that comes with the service has two analog line ports on it. Or you could just use the primary line/number from Vonage for fax. I've tested Speakeasy dialup over mine, and its just fine.

V.150 Modem over IP

[Drishmung]

Keep an eye out for V.150 (Modem over IP) support, which does exactly what you want as I understand it---except that there are not yet a lot of implementations.

This PDF has some more info.

V.150 is useful for other things than just faxes---security systems and environmental monitoring for instance. It's going to be a whole lot easier to accomodate existing systems by implementing V.150 in the new VoIP kit rather than waiting for everything to become IP enabled.

Re:V.150 Modem over IP

[man_ls]

That's actually a very good idea...what's it going to be, a "virtual modem" device where you "dial" the IP or hostname?

I think that could come in handy.

E-mail please.

[trafik]

I just don't understand why so many people are still shackled to fax machines. Buy a scanner, scan your document, and e-mail it.

They will come out the other end with much higher quality *and* the recipient will thank you for giving them the choice as to how to store it (i.e. store it electronically, or print-and-file).

Just a thought...

Re:E-mail please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because legal docs aren't acceptable as emailed images (yet), and almost all business have fax machines. Unfortunately a lot of business don't even have email, let alone scanners and staff who can use them.

It drives me maaaadd!

Re:E-mail please.

[Carnildo]

I just don't understand why so many people are still shackled to fax machines. Buy a scanner, scan your document, and e-mail it.

They will come out the other end with much higher quality *and* the recipient will thank you for giving them the choice as to how to store it (i.e. store it electronically, or print-and-file).

I did this for a while as a method of forwarding important mail to my parents while they were on vacation. The procedure usually went something like this:

1) Scan document. This usually involves a 45-second wait for the scanner to warm up. Scanning takes another 30 seconds.
2) Rotate the resulting image 180 degrees -- the scanner has a funny idea of up. 15 seconds.
3) Export the image to JPEG repeatedly, with different quality settings, to try getting the image size down below a quarter-megabyte while still being readable. 180 seconds or so.
4) Repeat for each page of the document.
5) Compose e-mail and attach images. 45 seconds
6) Dial up ISP and send e-mail. 30 seconds to connect, plus 45 seconds per page to send.

Total time: seven minutes to send a one-page document.

Recieving the e-mail:
1) Dial up ISP and collect e-mail. 30 seconds to connect, plus 45 seconds per page to recieve.
2) Save attachments. 15 seconds per page.
3) Open attachments in an image editor.
4) Turn on printer and wait for it to warm up. 45 seconds.
5) Print document. 30 seconds per page.

Total time: three minutes, for a one-page document.

The fastest, easiest solution we found was stuffing all the mail in a flat-rate priority mail envelope and sending it snail-mail. The mail would usually get there in two days or so, and involved a lot less effort for both parties.

Reversal

[Loconut1389]

Sort of funny to see us going from computer plugged into phone jack to phone jack plugged into computer (or network)

Get your hands dirty

[Anonymous Coward]

... and try asterisk. This program truely is amazing. Check out VoIP Info for a big wiki all about voip and asterisk. Next!

eFax

[merlin_jim]

I use eFax. Not sure about alternative OS, but windows client is pretty good. It works mostly through e-mail, sending .efx files to your email and a specially formatted e-mail address for outgoing. The .efx format seems to just be tiff with some metadata...

Working Solutions

[WilliamX]

Setup an asterisk pbx server, and signup with any number of VoIP providers who support G.711 codecs (like Voicepulse or their no bells service, Voicepulse Connect service). Plug your fax machine into a TDM400p card from digium.

Another option, pickup a Grandstream HandyTone 286 (from here for instance) or a Sipura SPA-2000 (from here for instance) (SIP devices, plug a regular phone, or fax, into it) instead of the asterisk box, but it gives you less flexibility. Both devices would work with the Voicepulse services, or most any other true SIP based VoIP service.

This works, been able to fax to people over Pulver's Free World Dialup service without any problems using both types of setup.

industrial strength option

[Big_Al_B]

Cisco ATA 186 lists for $170, but check the street for a better deal.

email a PDF

[TheLittleJetson]

people still use fax machines? does analog-over-digital-over-internet-over-digital seem dumb to anyone else?

It Works

[Detritus]

Fax machines, in my experience, just work. Stick the paper in the feeder, dial the number and press "send".

As opposed to finding a PC with a scanner. Discovering that the drivers and bundled software are hosed and nobody knows where the scanner software CD is. Or if it does work, it creates a huge file in some format that other programs can't read or crash when they try to read it. You finally get a scan in a file and attach it to an email message, only to discover that it gets bounced for being too big, gets removed for being an "evil file attachment carrying viruses", fills the disk quota on the recipients mailbox, or causes the email server to choke.

VOIP service providers

[pg133]

A handy list of VOIP service providers also check out the site for other usefull voip information.

Cisco ATA 188 Analog Telephone Adaptor

[prizna]

Check out these Cisco converters: http://cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/pcat/ata188.ht m These are used when a company has analog devices (such as fax machines) that they want to continue to use, when switching to VoIP. But then again, you have to connect these boxes to a Cisco CallMaster.