Re: [hylafax-users] Hylafax and Vonage

[Michael <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 18 Dec 2008 08:33:08 Ansar Mohammed wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> Anyone use Hylafax and Vonage? Is it reliable?

I will put this as nicely as I can-

I have been using Hylafax for over 2 years now. I also use Asterisk and VoIP 
(SIP) on a daily basis as my phone system here is fully digital.

I have spent hours, and hours and hours, on the issue of FoIP (Fax over IP) 
and I still have not got it working properly. All it has given me so far is a 
bit more knowledge of the technology and challenges, so I will continue to 
push ahead on it.

However I get the impression from this post and your previous one that you are 
new to Hylafax. Great, welcome to the community. :-)

Without going in to a long technical discussion (which I am not really 
qualified to do on this subject anyway), you will find good resources on the 
Internet explaining why it usually doesn't work properly. (Google "Steve 
Underwood" for starters).

To summerise - here are the connection technologies in order of preference:
1. PRI / BRI ISDN lines - good quality and scalable
2. Analogue lines - also work fine, though not as scalable
--- you should stop here ---
3. FoIP - requires good stable low latency connectivity (fibre?) and a lot of 
messing around / technical expertise to setup. And still has a 10% failure 
rate imho.
4. VoIP - unusable - 50% failure rate on a 'simple' document to 100% failure 
rate on anything else.

There is also the issue that for 3. to work properly your up line provider 
(and all of their up line providers that your calls are routed through) will 
need to support T.38 to the PSTN and have good, stable connectivity. In 
reality you will find most, certainly within the residential/mass market 
operators like Vonage, do not.

Kind regards,

Michael


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