Re: flexfax: any chance for using ISDN ?

[Andreas Busse <ab@ivm.net>]

Hi all,

On Wed, 9 Jun 1999, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:

> > This tends to be the province of professional rack type systems,
> > like the ISDN systems used by ISPs to support their dial in
> > customers.

you're perfectly right ;-)
We have lots of Livingston Portmaster 3 and Cisco AS5200
that all have E1/PRI interfaces. If such a box could
do fax services too, and if Hylafax would provide an
interface to these, we wouldn't need any new hardware.
Cisco is already working on a Fax solution for their
AS5300 system, see

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/software/
ios/120/120newft/120limit/120xj/sf_fax/allegro.htm

(oh, what an URL... -- maybe better search for "fax modem"
on Cisco's homepage ;-) )

This solutions appears quite interesting since it directly 
interacts with an SMTP mailer. However, it needs voice/fax 
modules installed and is available in IOS 12.0 only. 
Moreover, an AS5300 costs about $30,000 plus the voice/fax
modules. Slightly to expensive, and it wouldn't help
Hylafax at all.

> > I think you will need to talk to the developer relations
> > people at AVM and hope that your business is important enough
> > to them for them to spend time with you.

There's also a so-called "T1" box which has an E1 interface
but has a non-standard interface to the host computer. This
box might also be interesting.
 
> I'm not enough of a low-level coder to do this, but I suspect that
> someone could write drivers to sit atop the Natural Microsystems
> boards, and provide an AT/serial port interface to the operating
> system.

I'm quite sure that this is possible. However, I don't have
time to do it myself and doesn't know someone who has the time
*and* is able to do it ;-)

> Information pointing in this direction can probably be found at
> www.opentelecom.org, a site supporting a project to provide open
> drivers and such for the NMS boards (and other manufacturers, as time
> progresses -- although Dialogic probably won't be included, as they've
> just been bought out by Microsoft).
> 
> I'd sincerely like to see this happen; I just ain't found a customer to
> pay for the development yet.

I don't know how much that would cost. Any idea? Perhaps someone
else is also interested? I think of the TPC people that must
have similar problems all around the world...

Cheers,
Andy


> 
> Cheers,
> -- jra
> -- 
> Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra@baylink.com
> Member of the Technical Staff     Buy copies of The New Hackers Dictionary.
> The Suncoast Freenet            Give them to all your friends.
> Tampa Bay, Florida     http://www.ccil.org/jargon/             +1 813 790 7592
> 

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