[Smedleyja]

We have a fax machine that when you send out a fax it is sending the fax to one of our other inside the company fax machines in the same building. We are currently going through the process of switching over our phone system to VOIP. Could they have done something possibly? Just wanted to post this and see if you guys could give me any ideas or maybe someone else has had the same issue.

Thanks,

[no2pencil]

The fax machine works on an analog system (the tones, beeps, & pongs), where as VOIP is digital. When you mix the two, the digital encapsulates the analog packets & throws most of it away as garbage. The digital VOIP is going to try to clean the signal with echo suppression, & it obliterates the analog tones making them unrecognizable by the receiver. Because of this, the two devices can't agree on a handshake, & the communication fails.

For this you can two things. You can use an outside fax service (scan the fax image, upload, download, receive) or use an Analog Transmitter. I've used (& prefer) the Cisco 186/188. You will have to play with the codecs a bit, in order to get the configuration correct, but once in place you shouldn't have to re-visit the configuration.

This will work great for a fax machine, as the transmissions will be in short bursts. My experience has been using analog over VOIP for a dial up modem. I can get between five minutes to half an hour before the signal dies.

Lastly, I don't know about current market, but when I was first looking into buying these on eBay, I could get one for as low as $30 to as much as $100.

[Smedleyja]

Awesome, Thanks for the quick response. I'll look into these today and hopefully find one locally.

[no2pencil]

You're going to need one for any analog device. So if you have 2 modems, you'll need 2 ATA's.

[Smedleyja]

Yup, makes since. I did a little reading about them. I like to know what everything does ya know. Haha