Re: [hylafax-users] Eicon Diva vs Brooktrout

[Lee Howard <faxguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Albert Jumaquio (Helpdesk) wrote:

> Is the error rate worth the price?


I guess it depends what type and level of error rate we're talking about.

Both the Eicon (using Eicon's drivers) and the BrookTrout card work in 
such a way that most errors attributable to fax protocol errors will 
need to be fixed by the manufacturers.  If the error is not fax 
protocol, then it would be fixed with HylaFAX, and so with the 
BrookTrout solution you'd turn to iFAX for that, and I expect that 
they'd be as responsive as the open-source side (using the Eicon) would be.

There are two figures that you can get from xferfaxstats (for sending) 
and recvstats (for receiving) that will give you a general idea of 
"error rate".  One is commonly known as "error ratio" (this is probably 
what you mean by error-rate) and the other is "page throughput" (this 
should be considered as well although most people don't look at it 
much).  To get the error ratio you divide the number of errors by the 
number of pages received.  The page throughput is given in the script 
output, but it is the total time used divided by the number of pages 
received.  You have to be careful when comparing throughput, as factors 
such as average number of pages per job, V.34, MMR, and JBIG support can 
influence that figure (and thus throw off comparisons if you're looking 
for errors and not really looking for communication speeds).

I can't speak for any Eicon or BrookTrout installation (and I'd be 
delighted to see statistics from these), but you really ought to expect 
an error ratio of much less than 1%.  On multiple installations that I 
maintain (Multitech, MainPine, Comtrol) the error ratio is at about 0.2% 
(one error every 500 pages received) and page throughput is around 2.5 
pages/min for V.34 and 2.0 pages/min without V.34 (MMR support, average 
job of 3 pages, no JBIG).

Throughput will worsen as the number of image data retransmissions 
increase and as bitrate communcation fallbacks occur, and that's why 
it's a good diagnostic tool in conjunction with the error ratio.

Lee.


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