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emjayef
join:2007-11-25
Pleasant Hill, CA
Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X
TP-Link Archer C9
Obihai OBi200

2 edits

emjayef

Member

[Anveo] Testing FAX sending

I wanted to test out the FAX capabilities before I needed them, so I tried sending a FAX (3 times) to myself using their Web site to send it. Since I had terrible results, I wanted to first check to make sure this is something I should expect to work. I sent an email last week to support, but so far, I have heard nothing, so I don't even know if they got the email.

If it should work, has anyone else tried it? I have not been able to get it to work very much at all, and never without problems. Here is what happened...

I sent the first one, a cover sheet only, and it did not ever arrive. So, about 4 hours or so later, I tried sending another one to my alternate DID. Right after that, I got the first FAX via email, but it had the alternate's number. Then, I received several more copies, followed by a failure notification (FAILED: BUSY). No way to know which one that referred to. Then, 5 minutes later, I received another copy and another failure notification. I started thinking I might have to put a filter on my gmail account to stop some runaway process, but it stopped at this point.

A few days later, I tried again, this time sending a file with a cover sheet. I never got any response at all again (although my call log shows a call to the number right away).

I'm hoping this might be something that just can't be done rather than a glaring bug. But I don't really know another way to test incoming fax without signing up for some overpriced service.

EDIT: I apologize for an omission from my original post: I forgot to mention that I do not have a fax machine at all, and I was trying to send the fax using their web site feature to send a file, with optional cover sheet (or vice versa, which I initially tried).

EDIT2: I just noticed that Anveo does not support fax at all. They say they provide it, but do not support it in any way. I don't really understand that sort of business practice, advertising a feature but not supporting it. I suppose it's like a bank advertising unlimited ATM use, but don't come to us if you lose your money.

crazyk4952
Premium Member
join:2002-02-04
united state
Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite
Ubiquiti UniFi AP-LR
Polycom VVX300

crazyk4952

Premium Member

said by emjayef:

I wanted to test out the FAX capabilities before I needed them, so I tried sending a FAX (3 times) to myself. Since I had terrible results, I wanted to first check to make sure this is something I should expect to work.

To my knowledge, they use fax-over-IP, which is unreliable. If reliability is important to you for fax, make sure you choose a provider that uses TDM for faxing.

Personally, my experience with faxing through the Anveo portal echoes yours.
OzarkEdge
join:2014-02-23
USA

OzarkEdge to emjayef

Member

to emjayef
You could try this: 1-888-473-2963 HP Faxback Test (returns a fax in a few minutes). Not sure what it will confirm.

OE

emjayef
join:2007-11-25
Pleasant Hill, CA
Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X
TP-Link Archer C9
Obihai OBi200

emjayef to crazyk4952

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to crazyk4952
Thanks for the reply. I guess it's partially my fault for thinking I might get fax capabilities for so cheap when fax-only services are so much more.

I tried sending a fax to the fax service I've been using from Onesuite at $1/month, and I actually received it, although it didn't look very good. Maybe I'll have to keep that service for occasional faxes I might get. Perhaps I'll find a pay as you go fax out service, and just use them. I rarely need faxes anyway.

I guess I might as well take out the check for fax in my IVR at Anveo if it's not reliable.
emjayef

emjayef to OzarkEdge

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to OzarkEdge
Hmmm, that's interesting, I never heard about that. Maybe I'll try it to test the receipt of fax. I can test sending OK using my Onesuite account I've had for years for long distance, before I got VOIP capabilities. I was hoping to get rid of it, though.
bw5745
join:2014-03-14

bw5745 to emjayef

Member

to emjayef
I tried faxing from a real PSTN line to my Anveo number a while ago and had no problems. I found no mention of T.38 faxing at Anveo. The T.38 standard improves fax reliability over VoIP.

Without T.38, make sure that your ATA is using the G.711 ulaw (PCMu) codec. If you are using the GSM codec, there is no way that it will work. Changing the jitter buffer or echo cancellation settings in the ATA might help. Fax machines usually have settings that lower the speed. The name varies so check for something like Overseas Mode or VoIP Mode.

Anveo's lack of T.38 support hinders fax machines hooked up to your ATA. It does not directly reflect the faxing reliability and quality of Anveo's website-based incoming and outgoing fax service. Try sending a test document to the HP Fax Test Service from the Anveo website. Check the quality of the file sent back to your Anveo number. If you have a friend with a fax machine hooked up to a PSTN line, you can send them a test document via Anveo. Have them send you a clean document from their fax machine.

Instructions for the HP Fax Test Service:
»h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf ··· 00259105

emjayef
join:2007-11-25
Pleasant Hill, CA
Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X
TP-Link Archer C9
Obihai OBi200

emjayef

Member

Thanks for that info. I've never actually had a fax machine; I used to use a fax modem set up as a printer, and print to fax to send out, using a scanner if I needed to copy something. Receiving a fax was done via a fax to email service for $1/month. But I was hoping to do away with that service for incoming, and use Anveo's website for outgoing. I only might use a fax about once a year or so, so it's really not worth having a machine or paying $12/year.

I'll do some more testing for outgoing using my existing fax number, and I'll try the HP service to test incoming faxes.

So, I'm completely oblivious to the codec issue. If I rarely deal with faxes, is it worth using a codec optimized for fax - IOW, will the voice quality suffer? I have an obi110 ATA without the FAX capability - perhaps I should swap it for an obi200 that does have fax capabilities.
bw5745
join:2014-03-14

bw5745

Member

If I remember correctly, the Obi200 supports T.38 but since Anveo does not support it, it will not help.

The best way to fax would be to upload your document to Anveo via their Send Fax webpage:

You can attach a document up to 20 pages long in
TXT, PDF, JPG, GIF, HTML, PNG, TIFF, DOC and XLS File Formats.


For example, you can use the full Adobe Acrobat software to print to a PDF file. Anveo will take that PDF and send it as a fax to the recipient. While DOC and XLS files are supported, you should test it carefully to make sure the documents are rendered properly.

emjayef
join:2007-11-25
Pleasant Hill, CA

emjayef

Member

Thanks, and that is how I was trying to send the faxes, but maybe the problem was trying to send to myself. I'll have to experiment more.
bw5745
join:2014-03-14

bw5745

Member

Maybe Anveo's outgoing and incoming fax systems are outsmarting each other. When you call an Anveo DID with the default call flow, it doesn't sound like a fax machine, it sounds like a ringing phone. Maybe the outgoing server is waiting for a fax tone, while the incoming server is waiting for a fax tone too.

If you will be using a dedicated fax number with Anveo, try changing the call flow by connecting the Start control directly to Receive Fax control. I also saw some options inside the control that could have an effect. (Fax Receive Method: Default or T.30)
PX Eliezer1
Premium Member
join:2013-03-10
Zubrowka USA

PX Eliezer1 to bw5745

Premium Member

to bw5745
said by bw5745:

If I remember correctly, the Obi200 supports T.38 but since Anveo does not support it, it will not help.

Correct.

Obi 100 and 110 [do not] support the T.38 fax protocol which is the most reliable (or "least unreliable") way to use a real physical fax machine with VoIP.

Obi 200 and 202 [do] have T.38 support.

On the provider side, some providers support T.38 (including CC), others don't.

emjayef
join:2007-11-25
Pleasant Hill, CA
Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X
TP-Link Archer C9
Obihai OBi200

emjayef

Member

Thanks to all of you for the suggestions; gives me some things to look at and learn more about.

But it seems like there must be some problems on the Anveo side for sending a fax - why would a simple fax simply get ignored without being sent, without any sort of status for failure or success? Out of 4 attempts, I got one failure status, one success status, and two with no further evidence of life, except a record of a phone call out.

Also, I never got a response from my email to support. If they don't want to have anything to do with a fax problem, then they should not advertise the capability. It's an unfair business practice, and could be considered false advertising, I think. I should not be expected to know how they send their faxes out, or how they receive them. Sure, if I had a fax machine, I would be expected to know whether it is supported or not, but I don't have one, and I don't know. All I know is Onesuite, a company I used for their international calling, had an incoming fax to email service that was always reliable for just $1/month. I assume that if they can do it, so could Anveo.

cybersaga
join:2011-12-19
Selby, ON

cybersaga

Member

I've tried faxing from the Anveo portal a couple times. Each time it took a few attempts (it automatically retried), but it eventually went through successfully.

emjayef
join:2007-11-25
Pleasant Hill, CA
Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X
TP-Link Archer C9
Obihai OBi200

emjayef

Member

said by cybersaga:

I've tried faxing from the Anveo portal a couple times. Each time it took a few attempts (it automatically retried), but it eventually went through successfully.

That's what I expected. Since the only time I ever need to fax something is when it's important, it would be nice if I could rely on it to work, even if it taks a few tries. But from my recent experience, I can't even rely on knowing that it failed, which is unacceptable to me.

If I can't get it to work reliably by the time I'm ready to rate them, then I will be forced to deduct some from my rating. That would be a shame, because in most ways, the service is better than any other I've seen, for me. I can put up with problems from an honest business, but I hate to be misled, and then ignored when I ask about it. This is why I quit uVerse once during a 30-day trial; they misled me on a number of things, including direct questions I asked.
zamarac
join:2008-11-29
Canada

zamarac to emjayef

Member

to emjayef
said by emjayef:

I tried sending a FAX (3 times) to myself. I had terrible results

said by emjayef:

If they don't want to have anything to do with a fax problem, then they should not advertise the capability. It's an unfair business practice, and could be considered false advertising

Where they advertise this outgoing SIP-to-Fax feature? Only ads I can find are Web-to-Fax and Email-to-Fax »www.anveo.com/consumer/f ··· faxinout

emjayef
join:2007-11-25
Pleasant Hill, CA
Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X
TP-Link Archer C9
Obihai OBi200

1 edit

emjayef

Member

said by zamarac:

Where they advertise this SIP-to-Fax feature? Only ads I can find are Web-to-Fax and Email-to-Fax »www.anveo.com/consumer/f ··· faxinout

Sorry, I edited my initial post to clarify that I was using Web-to-Fax; I do not have a fax machine at all, and I have not tried connecting my computer fax-modem to the phone line. I was actually pretty excited about the web-to-fax feature, as I consider it easier than my previous method of using my computer, which was a pain. I have a scanner, so I could easily scan to a file and then upload the file, or just generate the file from a document.

But did you really think I would expect to be able to send a fax to my phone while I was using it to send the fax? Is that possible?
zamarac
join:2008-11-29
Canada

1 edit

zamarac

Member

It likely depends on your Call Flow settings. Didn't try with Anveo, but generally its possible: if one's phone is busy, a call is forwarded to voicemail after ringing Call Waiting a few times, so it can be forwarded to incoming faxes box instead if identified as a fax. It doesn't have to ring your phone number before being transferred to the fax box, unless you set it to ring.

gerick
join:2001-01-17
San Antonio, TX
Google Wifi
Obihai OBi200

gerick to emjayef

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to emjayef
If you just need to test incoming faxes, and are looking for another way to send for testing, there are a couple of other choices that I have used that you can try for the outgoing.

»faxzero.com/
They put an Ad on the cover page.
Maximum 3 pages + cover per fax
Maximum 5 free faxes per day

»www.myfax.com/free/
Maximum 2 free faxes per 24hrs.

Both allow faxing of text, MS Word doc, or PDF.
Radar73
join:2008-01-20
Ajax, ON

Radar73 to emjayef

Member

to emjayef
We use anveo fax at our office after switching ur phone system to asterisk and using anveo as our sip provider. We have probably sent and received 100 faxes by email using anveo and never had any issues with it. Seems very reliable.

emjayef
join:2007-11-25
Pleasant Hill, CA

emjayef to gerick

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to gerick
Thank you, gerick. That will be very useful. I have a way to test outgoing faxes, but incoming was a problem, but this should work fine for me.
emjayef

emjayef to zamarac

Member

to zamarac
I guess I assumed that it would retry at least once or twice if the line was busy; but I also assumed that, unlike a normal phone line, it would not "use" my number to send a fax back to my number. In fact, I have 2 numbers, and have no idea which one, if any, would even be used for outgoing calls. So, I could see no reason it should fail, and my line was not being used at the time it was sending the fax.
PX Eliezer1
Premium Member
join:2013-03-10
Zubrowka USA

PX Eliezer1 to gerick

Premium Member

to gerick
said by gerick:

....there are a couple of other choices that I have used that you can try for the outgoing....

Another good free service to [send out] faxes is TopFreeFax:
»www.topfreefax.com/SendF ··· eFax.php

Maximum pages allowed: 14
Allowed file types: pdf, txt, tif, jpg, gif, png *

They are owned by a good commercial Canadian fax service. IIRC you can send out two faxes every 24 hours.
bw5745
join:2014-03-14

bw5745

Member

I just tried temporarily connecting the Start control directly to the Receive Fax control. When I called in, I heard the normal long pure tone of a receiving fax machine followed by short bursts of modem tones.

Try sending an Anveo fax to a real telephone (Set Account Preferences/Fax Options/Fax Delivery Attempts to 1!) and listen for the sending fax tone. It should sound like a tone for 0.5 seconds followed by 3 seconds of silence. This pattern is supposed to repeat continuously. If you only hear it once, or you hear nothing at all, then Anveo's outgoing fax server is trying to be clever and is waiting for the receiving fax machine's tone. If so, sending an Anveo fax to an Anveo number with the default call flow will be unreliable. A fax only call flow would be more reliable.

emjayef
join:2007-11-25
Pleasant Hill, CA
Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X
TP-Link Archer C9
Obihai OBi200

emjayef

Member

Would a cell phone count as a real telephone? That sounds like a good idea for testing; having started out in the dial-up modem days, I'm pretty used to the various handshaking tones.

Maybe I should get a payg DID for a fax-only number. Do you know if I have to pay for E911 for that, or would it be only the $0.50/month charge? I already pay for E911 for my main number, so I don't really need it, but I don't know if it's tied to every DID or not. Considering how rarely I use fax, it's not worth spending very much.
emjayef

emjayef to PX Eliezer1

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to PX Eliezer1
Thanks a lot. That looks like a great resource, and would be more than enough for my needs, since it does seem like more an more people are able to handle email attachments these days, anyway, which are far easier for everyone.
bw5745
join:2014-03-14

bw5745

Member

I think E911 fees are associated with each account rather than each DID. If you don't pay for E911, outbound calling from the ATA on the account is disabled. As Anveo faxing is internal to their servers, I don't see how E911 could apply. There is a setup fee for the Per Minute number and a few months of service is required before you can cancel.

A cell phone should be fine for checking the fax tones. Turn on the mic mute function so the phone doesn't feedback from the loud fax tones.

Whether Anveo can fax reliably to itself does not accurately reflect Anveo's reliability with your potential senders or recipients. You should test with your friends and associates too.

emjayef
join:2007-11-25
Pleasant Hill, CA
Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X
TP-Link Archer C9
Obihai OBi200

emjayef

Member

Thanks a lot for you valuable help. I'm going to try some of your tips, and others from this topic, soon, but for the next few days, I'm going to have to motivate myself to finish my taxes. Apr 15 is not getting any further away like I had hoped.
said by bw5745:

Whether Anveo can fax reliably to itself does not accurately reflect Anveo's reliability with your potential senders or recipients. You should test with your friends and associates too

I think that's a good idea; now that I have some new options for testing, I can send a fax to myself from one of the limited free or ad-based services, and I have at least one (so far) reliable service for receiving faxes.
drdigital13
join:2009-09-06
Evanston, IL

drdigital13

Member

I have been sending faxes through Anveo web page (Communications --> Send fax) for a couple of years without one failure. During the last 2 months though I noticed what seems like an aberration: despite allowing for 4 attempts only, 2 out of the 3 faxes I sent were billed as 38 minutes and 110 minutes. This is not cheap! I asked customer service what the timing between attempts is but haven't heard back.
PX Eliezer1
Premium Member
join:2013-03-10
Zubrowka USA

PX Eliezer1

Premium Member

said by drdigital13:

despite allowing for 4 attempts only, 2 out of the 3 faxes I sent were billed as 38 minutes and 110 minutes.

Did they go through in the end?

How many pages were they?

Were the destination numbers ones that you had faxed to before, or not?

Is there a max minutes setting on the Anveo fax sending config?

emjayef
join:2007-11-25
Pleasant Hill, CA
Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X
TP-Link Archer C9
Obihai OBi200

emjayef to drdigital13

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to drdigital13
said by drdigital13:

I asked customer service what the timing between attempts is but haven't heard back.

One problem with faxes is that they say it's unsupported, and is a "value added service", whatever that means. I guess it means they offer it as an extra, no guarantees that it will work. But what it really means is that they ignore any questions about faxes.