Re: [hylafax-users] science fiction??

["Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com>]

On Friday, September 29, 2000, at 1:19:06 AM, Lee Howard wrote:
>>From what I can gather from faxinfo and faxrcvd man pages you can only
>>send faxes as email attachments to
>>the intended persons only if we know that " Fax from source Fax number
>>is always meant for Mr X". Correct??

> Actually, it's etc/FaxDispatch which works as you've described.  And it's
> not neccesarily the fax number that you match, it's the contents of the
> TSI, which *might* be the fax number.  In order to know this you
> essentially need to get your first fax from them and check their TSI string.

Yep.  So far, so good.

>>In this context what I would like to know is, does hylafax have the
>>capability of getting say an extrn number which
>>could be used to "route" incoming faxes to the intended persons.
>>
>>Example:
>>Hylafax server Number : (XXX) - YYY ZZZZ
>>
>>say Mr ABC's extn is defined as 1111
>>& Mr DEF's extn is defined as 2222
>>
>>In this situation if the remote fax machine dials XXXYYYZZZ1111 then
>>hylafax could use 1111 to mail the recv'ed fax to Mr ABC. If the
>>remote fax machine dials XXXYYYZZZZ2222 then hylafax would use 2222
>>so that it can route to Mr DEF.

> As it stands, HylaFAX doesn't interpret the incoming number called.  There
> needs to be a fair amount of communication here between the phone company,
> the modem, and HylaFAX in order for this to be accomplished.  How many
> modems report the number called?  Few, I imagine.

None, at the moment.  This is usually called DID; Direct Inward
Dialling.  It's an extra cost service from the telco, that delivers a
code signifying which of a block of Directory Numbers assigned to a
trunk group was actually called.  It's usually delivered as touchtone
on analog lines; someone suggested that it might be possible to recode
faxgetty a bit to listen for those, recently.

Otherwise, the only current solution would be a way to get the DID
info delivered as CNID, which modems *do* know how to deal with.

<litany>
There's a manufacturer who's working on a T-1/E-1/PRI card that will
probably handle this stuff too, projected date Christmas; their guy
has promised to check back in about useful AT-emulator features when
they get that far.
</litany>

> So, usually if you're trying to sort faxes by the incoming number called,
> you use different modems on different lines, and HylaFAX routes the faxes
> according to the devid.

That's the only other current solution.

>>Am I talking Science Fiction here or can such thing be really done??

> This can be done, but I'd say that it would be easier to get this done
> using Caller-ID information than it would be using incoming number called
> since more modems and phone companies seem to support Caller-ID functions
> than the other.  (Now if the same people send different faxes to different
> "coworkers" at different times, then Caller-ID won't help much.)

Nope.  The *real* solution here is OCR software to read the addressee
out of the incoming cover sheet.  But progress on free OCR software is
glacial, or slower.  It's really not an easy problem...

> But, if you want to do routing by number-called: 1) get a modem that
> reports number called, 2) get your phone company to send that information
> with the RING, 3) develop HylaFAX in such a way that it reads this number
> called information from the modem at the time of the RING, 4) code faxrcvd
> or etc/FaxDispatch in such a way that the faxes are routed using that
> number-called string.

I forget whom it was who suggested that reading those DID/DNIS digits
with the modem might be possible; Robert maybe?  I'll have to see if I
can track down some more physical layer info on this.  I'm not even
sure you can plug a standard modem into an analog DID trunk; I think
some sort of interface is required; maybe someone's already done this
translation.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra@baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff     
The Suncoast Freenet
Tampa Bay, Florida     http://baylink.pitas.com                +1 727 804 5015




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