VOIP etc > Voice Over IP - VOIP > VOIP Tech Chat > [Asterisk] What about Flowroute for faxing?

[Asterisk] What about Flowroute for faxing?

You might want to see this which also mentions FlowRoute to an extent:
»comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.te···al/42873

reply to nunya
Also, FlowRoute offers a 25 cent credit to get started. You might try them out, see if T.38 works....

reply to nunya
They used to be much more "YMMV" with T.38 termination, but within the last year or so they've stuck their neck out as officially supporting T.38: »twitter.com/flowroute/status/135···17888512 -- I also posted about my experience with Flowroute here: »puck.nether.net/pipermail/voiceo···986.html

To sum up, my experience has been that whenever I run into a particular destination that I have issues negotiating T.38 with, I open a ticket with Flowroute (on their on-line ticketing system, "T.38 Negotiation" is even a specific problem category now) and they either identify the upstream provider that is causing the issue and open a ticket with them, and/or they simply re-route around that provider for that particular destination and have you re-test. So unfortunately it isn't completely "100% worry-free, works-every-time", but if you are willing to take the time to work with their support guys (who are very, very good) when you do run into problems, they will provide you with a solution.

Note that this only speaks to their termination services. I generally do not use Flowroute to get my DIDs, but I do have 1 DID with them and T.38 origination works flawlessly on it. I believe they have said (although I can't find it right now) that they support T.38 on the majority (if not all) of their DIDs, but again I can't really speak to that given how limited my experience is with their origination product. But the one I do have works great.

Hope this helps,

-- Nathan

reply to nunya
fax over VOIP (FOIP) is one of my interests and have some considerable experience with it

T.38 does not insure that faxes will go through, unfortunately. There are a number of stages of fax negotiation and transmission from you to the receiver that can foul things up.

just because any company says they support T.38, it does not mean a lot at all, in fact, you can sometimes get better results not using T.38 depending on the carrier and the circumstances

flowroute is shadowy, but anyways, nothing you can do can guarantee landline/POTS level fax success rates with VOIP. And T.38 will not allow the very fastest fax transmission speeds either to operate out of a fax machine.

What you need is a carrier that will at least try and make it work most of the time for you and some carriers don' t want to be bothered. Fax machines are very rigid in the way they interoperate which is the underlying problem and they require a continuous stream of signal and slight hiccups foul them up easily

reply to IPfaxer

reply to Trev
I'm not terribly concerned about the speed of a fax. I'm more concerned with it getting there.
In my perfect little world, faxing would have been dead and buried years ago. Unfortunately I have to deal with many governmental bodies, and they seem to be the worst offenders as faxing goes.

For the record, I don't actually use a fax fachine. I use a fax server (Hylafax). I like it because all I have to do is "print" a document to the fax server, and away it goes. Unfortunately over g711, it seems to be failing more often than working these days.
--
If someone refers to herself / himself as a "guru", they probably aren't.

reply to Trev
disagree about what?

you misunderstood what I wrote

faxing without VOIP with modern fax machines does not take place typically at 14.4 kbps - that is dinosaur speed - it is much faster

no T.38 implementation supports the modern and faster fax speeds - look it up for yourself - oh wait, you already agreed with that

everything I wrote was 100% accurate - not sure what you "respectfully" disagree with or what the point of your remarks are

to PX El.. yes shadowy - if you can get to the bottom of their operation please let us know - we don't like transacting with businesses where we can't figure out their actual operations and ownership etc. - too risky and telco is too important

nevada is a haven for incorporations, like delaware, many businesses devoted to just being agent of service for out of state incorporators

one of founders says business is in Seattle
one says Nevada
I have no idea

I guess the issue is a few people putting up VOIP service with some hosted or leased servers somewhere gives us no confidence - we only want to work with carriers with significant physical plants and commitment to appropriate staffing - we don't want fly by nights and we don't want shadowy operations that are just cash machines for the owners but when trouble happens it is just blamed on some other company in the VOIP chain - you don't see CallCentric blaming other companies - they take responsibility -

its too easy for anyone to start offering VOIP service and have the service actually be handled by someone else and for the service to be subpar - for casual users who think VOIP is just fun, that's great, but not when you really need telco reliability and you are deploying boatloads of Cisco gear and supporting many users at once and need to be able to trust the carrier

Well of course, that's why my main provider for business and home is CallCentric.

reply to PX Eliezer
I mean look at the HQ address filed with the FCC (which itself is not really evidence of anything other than a filing) - its just the company they used to incorporate, their registered agent in Nevada (just because that is a requirement) named Mail Link LLC
848 N RAINBOW BLVD, Las Vegas - not a real office for Flowroute - just meets minimal incorporation requirements for a business to be incorporated in Nevada which has attractive tax advantages

that gives no confidence at all to us

reply to PX Eliezer
sorry did not mean to be critical of you, you did that research and that was good on your part

we have seen that info before and have tried to work with them before also a couple years ago and it just seemed to be not what we wanted in terms of scale and trust etc. - its not just for us, its for our customers so that is why we care so much

reply to PX Eliezer
yes Callcentric has been really good, glad we agree on that and probably lots more too!

reply to IPfaxer
Oh, I never thought for a second that you were being critical of me.

Thanks.

for what its worth...
»nvsos.gov/SOSEntitySearch/RACorp···LINK+LLC

reply to IPfaxer

I don't disagree with you - there are plenty of more fly-by-night operators that are far worse for sure!

Yes, we have heard they can be reliable but that with trouble tickets sometimes things never get resolved or get blamed on other 3rd parties and that they are more or less a virtual entity

Notice that their contact page on their website lists their service agent address which would only delay the time it takes to send them a letter, they should use their real office address for that - but that's just it - do they have a real office? Or just some people who work from their own homes? Absolutely nothing wrong with that but makes us not want to trust telco traffic to an operation that is only virtual in that way. It means a lot of cooks in the kitchen and one slip up and everybody is pointing fingers.

At least their website has correct year 2012 at bottom and since beginning, they have had a good looking website in my opinion and it has not changed much. Compare that to some others and it boggles my mind that some others even have any customers at all!

Great points and thanks for sharing your good experience with Flowroute - people should try them and see if it works for their needs

reply to w1ve
Well, I wouldn't exactly call it "hell-bent". I did use Vitelity's vFax for a while. It worked most of the time, but I did not care for their "applet" to send faxes. It also left you guessing - did my fax go through? I had a few fail, and there was never any indication unless I logged into the portal to check. Often after getting the phone call "I thought you were going to fax that yesterday...".

I like being able to fax from "in program". With the Incredible FAX 2.0, I can do that. I haven't found any thing else where the fax "behaves" like a network printer.

I'm still trying to find out, definitively, if T.38 will even integrate properly with Asterisk and Hylafax. There's a lot of conflicting information out there concerning Asterisk 1.8 and T.38.
--
If someone refers to herself / himself as a "guru", they probably aren't.