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Re: [hylafax-users] ISDN-BRI vs Analog DID: Hardware recomendations / Automatic routing



On 2005.01.19 09:40 Steve Melo wrote:

Also, do I have any other options for automatic routing of faxes?

The common automatic routing options that I know of are...


1) Distinct Lines and Devices

This is functional, but is rather costly for a 20-line setup where you seem to be doing fine already with 2 lines.

2) Subaddressing

This works like a charm and requires no additional hardware, but it's nearly impossible to educate the people who send faxes to you how to send it... even if they do have fax equipment that supports sending it.

3) Routing on TSI

This also works well and requires no additional hardware, but it requires maintenance work on the part of the HylaFAX administrator every time a new fax sender sends a fax. And, hopefully your senders use some distinctive information in their TSI. The big downside, though, is that the sender doesn't choose where the fax is going. So they can't send faxes to different routes on the same server.

4) Routing on Caller*ID

This also works well, but is nearly identical to the pros/cons of routing on TSI.

5) Routing on DID/DNIS/DNID

This is usually what people want: distinctively dialed numbers for each route. The downside, though, is that it requires special lines and hardware. In your case where 2 lines have been adequate for 20 routes, I would think that "analog DID" would be more appropriate than a fractional T1... unless you can get your fractional T1 at around $100 per month.

6) DTMF Routing

You need a PBX (that knows the routing, probably from DID) involved in this one. This is also called "two-stage dialing". The PBX rings the line, the modem answers the call and waits for a series of DTMF digits. The PBX sends the routing digits, and then the PBX puts the call through. This works well also, but it pretty much requires that you have in-house DID capabilities already... just not the DID-capable fax modem.

7) Distinctive Ring

The telco rings with a different cadence for each dialed number that terminates on your line(s). This works well, and added functionality for this purpose was added to HylaFAX in 4.2.1. There is still some codework to do to get the distinctive ring identification passed through to FaxDispatch, but I'd be willing to do that if someone wanted to step up and say they were willing to play guinea-pig for me as I tested my development work on them. I think that distinctive ring is limited to 5 different cadences per line, though. So you'd need 4 or 5 lines to match your needed 20 routes. That proably will end up running you nearly as much as analog DID.

Lee.

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