| Fax problem with Vonage I have 3 fax lines with Vonage and they are having problems with faxing. The lines are connected to 3 separate fax machines. These machines were tested on a POTS line and worked OK. Is there something new that Vonage is doing for fax? Has anyone encountered a similar problem?? |
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| Fax has been working fine for me (within the US; haven't tried intl). Maybe you don't have enough bandwidth?
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| reply to Rogerquake
Fax has never worked for me and noone really has been able to help. I just basically gave up on it. |
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 nickzIn A Past Life I Was AstroguyPremium
join:2001-12-04
Hammond, IN | reply to Rogerquake
This is what you will find when more people chime in: some people have no problem with faxing on Vonage. I'm in that camp. Others have little to no success at all.
This is what I believe: faxing will work fine over Vonage if your Internet connection is stable. Any packet loss or jitter will kill the ability to reliably send and receive faxes. I think it is extremely dependent upon how good your connection is, and by "good" I'm not just referring to speed.
As far as your question, no I don't think anything changed with Vonage. Something may have changed with your ISP though that is now causing the problems for you. |
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 XPatWell...OkayPremium
join:2003-02-24
Fort Myers, FL | reply to Rogerquake
said by Rogerquake:
I have 3 fax lines with Vonage and they are having problems with faxing. The lines are connected to 3 separate fax machines. These machines were tested on a POTS line and worked OK. Is there something new that Vonage is doing for fax? Has anyone encountered a similar problem??
I am one of the lucky ones. Fax has just worked for me...flawlessly, from Europe and from the States, send and receive, on Faaaast DSL, Sloooow DSL and cable as well. I have only used a stand-alone fax (fairly old Philips. Model # escapes me now...it is in Europe) a brand new Brother MFC-4820c multifunction printer/Scanner with phone and fax and another stand alone fax which is in the next room, and I am too lazy to go look at the make and model.
Many of the wise folk in this forum have discovered that Vonage Fax doesn't do well on a PC Fax modem. I've never tried.
John
P.S. 5 more days and I will have had Vonage for a year. WooHoo. |
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| reply to Rogerquake
Do different ports need to be open with faxing on Vonage ATA 186 than with voice? I have no problem with voice but I cannot fax. The fax stops after "connecting " appears. |
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 blohner
join:2002-06-26
Cortlandt Manor, NY
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| reply to Rogerquake
I agree with the post about your internet quality (low jitter, low latency, no spikes and enough bandwidth)...
I have maybe one in 20-40 or so faxes failing on the first attempt and then usually going through right on the automatic retry... (using Vonage)
But I also rarely ever have audio problems on the phone - and I am very picky phone user (I hate making long calls on CDMA cellphones for example because I can't stand the compression they use)... I often am on single calls for 1+ hour and never have audio dropouts etc...
Fax over VoIP is much prone to failure if any of the transport conditions are not 100% right...
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I am addicted to speed --- OOL speed that is ---
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 nunyaWho is John Galt?Premium,MVM
join:2000-12-23
O Fallon, MO
kudos:5
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| reply to Rogerquake
I have a rock solid DSL connection. I have about an 80% success rate faxing through Vonage. I've found that I have the most failures on long distance calls. I have also tried over cable with the same results. I have also tested a few different fax machines, producing the same results (except for 1 HP, which performed terribly consistently).
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nickzIn A Past Life I Was AstroguyPremium
join:2001-12-04
Hammond, IN | reply to Rogerquake
said by Rogerquake:
Do different ports need to be open with faxing on Vonage ATA 186 than with voice? I have no problem with voice but I cannot fax. The fax stops after "connecting " appears.
No. If a call can be made, then your Vonage is working. There are no extra ports needed for faxing. It's just a phone call as far as Vonage is concerned.
If you're using the Cisco, try dialing *99 before the phone number and see if that helps. (This apparently has no effect with the Motorola.)
Also, if you can change it on your fax machine, set it to 9600 baud. Faster speeds seem to be problematic with faxing over Vonage. |
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| reply to Rogerquake
My fax machine does not have a setting for 9600 baud or at least I cannot find it. |
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ieee1394Premium
join:2001-08-25
Washington | said by Rogerquake:
My fax machine does not have a setting for 9600 baud or at least I cannot find it.
Most new machines don't. They auto-negotiate their connections. But that doesn't work over VOIP and the higher the rated speed of your fax machine the more doomed you are likely to be. I think my machine tops out at 14.4 and it also has ECM so I haven't had problems with the faxes I have sent over Vonage (I no longer use Vonage to fax though). |
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joshj
join:2001-10-30
Antelope, CA | reply to Rogerquake
Anyone who says they "never" have problems with Vonage is not telling the truth. Truth is that Vonage works about 98% of the time, but everyone will have problems.
Most of the time, faxing works fine for me. I don't use the Vonage fax as my official business fax, but I send out on it regularly and it's fine. I suspect the newer fax machines (with faster modems) will have more problems than older ones. I have an HP 3150 fax and it works about 9 out of 10 times. |
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| reply to Rogerquake
I transferred my ATA-186 to home where I have a different DSL service and a different router and I have the same problem with faxing. The voice is OK on the line but I cannot send or receive a fax. I think the problem is with the handshaking event. Does anyone have any knowledge to correct the problem?? |
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| reply to Rogerquake
I also had trouble faxing until I put one of those line filter gizmos inline and now I am able to fax without problem. YMMV. |
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blohner
join:2002-06-26
Cortlandt Manor, NY Reviews:
·Optimum Online
·Verizon FiOS
·Google Voice
·ooma
·Vonage
| You bring up a good point.
My 95-98% success rate with faxes over Vonage (I don't send a lot but I really almost never fail) might have to do with that I built an attenuator to lower the line volume level - when I original got Vonage all POTS and Vonage lines where going into the same PBX in my house and the Vonage lines where significantly louder so I lowered the Volume to have them all at the same level. POTS is completely gone but I never took the attenuator out... I suspect that the 'native' volume could be too loud for some less tolerant modems...
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I am addicted to speed --- OOL speed that is ---
~Help find a cure for cancer~Proud Member Team Discovery |
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nickzIn A Past Life I Was AstroguyPremium
join:2001-12-04
Hammond, IN | blohner: Can you post some more details on your attenuators? I have been considering ordering some from sandman.com because I find that Vonage lines are quite loud compared to my old POTS lines. |
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| reply to Rogerquake
What type of attenuator would you recommend to put inline? |
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blohner
join:2002-06-26
Cortlandt Manor, NY Reviews:
·Optimum Online
·Verizon FiOS
·Google Voice
·ooma
·Vonage
| reply to nickz
I built my own.
270Ohm resistor serial in tip AND ring (one each). Get at least a 1Watt version of the resistor.
Price: around a buck at radioshack...
You can experiment with different Ohm's... 270Ohm worked closest to POTS for me... Make sure you put the same value in tip and ring - otherwise your line will be unsymmetrical and you will get echo etc...
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I am addicted to speed --- OOL speed that is ---
~Help find a cure for cancer~Proud Member Team Discovery |
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| reply to Rogerquake
Is the modem filter from sandman.com similar to this? |
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blohner
join:2002-06-26
Cortlandt Manor, NY | Not sure about the modem filter - since they are not writing how it works.... |
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