[hylafax-devel] Supporting Digital Modems in HylaFAX.

[Marcio Saito <marcio@cyclades.com>]

Hello.

This is Marcio Saito, I work for Cyclades Corporation (manufacturer of
serial boards, WAN adapters, remote access servers and routers).

HylaFAX is new to me. I'm writing to know what is needed for us to
support Hylafax with digital modems inside a RAS box (not analog
modems connected to the serial ports of the Unix system).

One of the products we manufacture is a stand-alone, integrated
digital RAS box (called Cyclades-PR4000). It connects to a Ethernet
LAN in one side and to a dialup T1 or E1 trunk in the other side. It
incorporates a router, a PPP server and the digital modems in one box.
ISPs use it to provide remote access. For reference, this box is
functionally equivalent to products such the Lucent Portmaster 3 and
Ascend MAX 4000/6000.

The modems inside this box do have support for Fax, but today we don't
provide any interface to allow an application running in a Unix System
to access them.

I understand that one solution would be to provide Unix drivers that
establish some type of TCP connection with my box and emulate a Unix
TTY interface for the application. HylaFAX would think the fax-modem
is local and everything would work.

I don't like that solution (because it depends on proprietary
interfaces and requires the maintenance of separate drivers for each
supported operating system).

I was wondering whether or not someone has defined a standard
interface (probably TCP-socket based) for applications like HylaFAX to
access modems inside a RAS over the network. If so, I would like to
know what it is so that we can provide the same interface in my boxes.

If such standard interface doesn't exist, I would like to discuss
whether or not we can define one, so that HylaFAX and other
applications could access fax-modems over the network without
depending on TTY emulation. I'd like to know whether or not there is
interest among HylaFAX users and developers to support faxes operating
over a T1/E1 digital trunk.

In any case, if there is anybody in the list who could discuss this
with me or point me the right direction, I would appreciate.

Thanks,

Marcio.
-- 
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Marcio Saito
Director of Technology
voice (510) 770-9727 x214  mailto:marcio@cyclades.com
Cyclades Corporation http://www.cyclades.com
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