Re: [hylafax-users] general IAXmodem concepts

[Lee Howard <faxguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

marthter wrote:

> Lee Howard wrote  on 04/05/2007 07:58 PM:
>
>  
>
> > marthter wrote:
> >    
> >
> > > I understand the caveats about faxing over VOIP (at least in as much 
> > > as one can understand the caveats without understanding the above! ).
> > >      
> >
> > It sounds like you may understand them but apparently you don't 
> > believe them.
> >
> > http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/docs/fax-over-voip.pdf
> >
> >    
> No I believe them too, I just couldn't understand why people would be 
> talking about IAXmodem if the problems were insurmountable.

With iaxmodem installations the caveat problems are mitigated 
(typically) by the IAX2 communication occurring over the lossless 
loopback interface (127.0.0.1).

> I figured 
> why would you bother throwing Asterisk into the mix, if it wasn't saving 
> you the phone and long distance charges of the analogue lines.
>  

It's generally approached differently.  Generally the iaxmodem user is 
already using Asterisk and needs to reliably support faxing from there.  
Normally people aren't installing iaxmodem and Asterisk for doing 
strictly fax.

> So from what you're saying (if I'm getting it : - ), IAXmodem it is not 
> being talked about and used because it lets you use HylaFAX on VOIP, it 
> is just being talked about and used because it is another option for a 
> local fax modem using local analogue lines.
>  

It's being talked about because it's probably the most reliable means to 
support fax on Asterisk systems.  It's also probably the least-expensive 
(money) route to a fax server - especially one with T1s or E1s... since 
the hardware involved is relatively less-expensive (a "clone" X100P can 
run as little as $15 after shipping).  However, there are certainly some 
limitations to its use (i.e. V.17 is not currently supported, and V.34 
will not likely be supported for years and years) and application 
(systems with limited resource availability - i.e. CPU can get used 
heavily, lots of disk access, etc - can interfere with iaxmodem's usage 
of them).

Lee.


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