CEO Letter - Fax Servers for the SME?
It’s ironic that, to a point, the smaller the business the
greater the productivity benefit of computer-based fax
servers, yet the enterprise fax-server industry, for the
most part, has been unable to develop a business
model that addresses the needs and budget of the
small business.
Until recently, the price of the enterprise-fax
OEM’s product, at $4,000-plus, was quite
simply out of the reach of a small business.
Several factors are contributing to this valuable
product finally finding the SME. Recent
technical innovations have eliminated some
of them, software-only pricing has taken care
of others, and the VoIP service providers are
finally doing their part. And the remaining ones
vanish with a little marketing innovation.
Interested? Read more of what Commetrex’ CEO has to
say on the subject by pasting the URL into your browser
or
Finally: SIP Forum’s FoIP Interop Workshop
The SIP Forum is responsible
for good works such as the SIPit interop events, the
SIPconnect SIP-trunking recommendation, and now
T.38 interoperability. The first SIP Forum “T.38
Interoperability Workshop” was held on November 10
at the San Francisco W Hotel, which is across the street
from the Moscone Center, site of the recent VoiceCon
event. The four-and-one-half-hour meeting was attended
by technical representatives of vendors serving the carrier
and enterprise, as well as a smattering of service
providers. Position papers were presented by
AEMcom srl, Omnitor AB, and Commetrex.
If you’re interested, the papers are posted at
SIP Forum
A consensus quickly emerged that there were no
significant T.38-interoperability problems. The
problems seemed to be centered on the performance of
some T.38 implementations, T.38 carrier uptake,
and SIP-trunking accessibility. Between 2002 and
2004, Commetrex’ T.38 Interoperability Test Lab did a
lot to advance interoperability. But that’s not the same
as performance, which is an implementation’s ability to
withstand the vagaries of the open Internet. Among the
vendors, there seemed to be a division between those
that were successful over the Internet and those that
weren’t. Among the latter, there was even a question
about T.38 itself, and whether it could achieve its aim of
sending error-free faxes over the Internet. It was noted
that the backbone IP carriers are finally building T.38
into their infrastructure, mainly by deploying Sonus GSX
gateways, but many of the access providers—the legions of
VoIP service providers—have yet to adjust by offering SIP
trunking and handing off to T.38-only partners. Interested?
Contact Mike Coffee mcoffee@commetrex.com at or
770-407-6021.
What is T.30 Anyway?
Commetrex’ BladeWare media server and Multi-Modal
Terminating Fax (MMTF) licensed media technology allow
the user to send and receive both T.38 and G.711
pass-through faxes in media servers. Because we
can terminate both forms of IP-fax transport, we get plenty of questions, such as,
“Does BladeWare handle T.38 and T.30 IP faxes?” Of
course, what they mean is G.711 pass-through, not T.30,
because T.30 is the protocol that any fax terminal uses to
send or receive a fax, regardless of how the fax is
transported: PCM over TDM, T.38, or G.711 pass through.
If your fax server is connected to an IP network you might
have to be able to handle both T.38 and G.711 pass-through
faxes. But regardless, T.30 is used in both cases as the
terminating-fax protocol.
Want to learn more? Contact Tom Ray at tray@commetrex.com
or 770-407-6025.
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Does G.711 Pass Through Work?
There’s a lot of misinformation being put out by vendors
that don’t support G.711 pass through on their media servers,
so we thought we’d stop for a moment and set the record
straight. The real answer to the G.711-pass-through question
is “it depends”. You should only use T.38 to transport faxes
over the “open Internet”; the modems that process the signal
can’t overcome the missing packets. But there are many
applications where the fax is transported via IP, but not over
the open Internet. Commetrex’ VoIP access service
provider, Cbeyond Communications, does not support
T.38, but their private high- performance metro network
delivers error-free G.711 faxes. Recently, a major telecom
OEM customer of ours upgraded its TerminatingT38 software
license to MMTF because they found that many of their
enterprise customers wanted to use their PBX, which didn’t
support T.38, as a gateway, avoiding the purchase of an
additional network element…no open Internet, just the
corporate LAN. Another example: you may want to use
ATAs without T.38 support to connect in-house fax terminals
to your corporate fax server. Not a problem if that fax server
is based on BladeWare.
Want to learn more? Contact Cliff Schornak at
cschornak@commetrex.com or 770-407-6027.
V.34 Fax Relay Now Shipping
It’s bound to happen. Sometime soon you’re going to
get a requirement for a T.38 relay with V.34. Then,
“Who ya gonna call?” Commetrex, that’s who. We’ve
been shipping our V.34 and V.34-capable T.30 for a year,
and now we’ve integrated the modem with our T.38 V3
protocol engine. So you don’t have to say “no” to that
V.34 requirement. We’ll be glad to license the necessary
technology to you.
Contact sales@commetrex.com for more information.
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