Fax line problems

[chezman]

I've had problems with the fax line service from Viatalk since day 1. They cannot seem to give me the service I need. Sometimes the fax quits after 1 page, sometimes after a couple, but for sure it won't get past 6 pages ever. I have a home office that I often send multiple page faxes and this is a pain. I pay an extra $9.95 each month for this priveledge? Anyone else have this experience? It is a new fax machine that worked with my previous legacy switch provider.

[Brendan]

There are plenty of tips that seem to be floating around about how to get faxing working well. Someone should be by soon to share em, I don't have much experience with it myself.

-Brendan

[fareal]

Look in your fax manual or call your fax manufacturer and set your fax to 9600 baud.

I was only able to send 1 page faxes 95% of the time until I made this change.

[AzAmusements]

I've had problems with the fax line service from Viatalk since day 1. They cannot seem to give me the service I need. Sometimes the fax quits after 1 page, sometimes after a couple, but for sure it won't get past 6 pages ever. I have a home office that I often send multiple page faxes and this is a pain. I pay an extra $9.95 each month for this priveledge? Anyone else have this experience? It is a new fax machine that worked with my previous legacy switch provider.

I am in the same exact boat as Chezman... I receive incoming faxes with no problem but have about a 90% failure on outgoing. All support can tell me is that it is with the technology with converting digital to analog and there is nothing that they can do at this time. I specifically bought a fax machine where I can change the baud rate and have to set it at 7200 to get the best performance of 10% success. Line filters and dsl filters make no difference. I have the unlimited business plan so this is "included free" with my service but I do not see the benifit. Not all customers accept email or trust it like faxes especially for personal information such as credit card info.

If anyone can help resolve this issue I am sure that alot of people would be very greatful.

[VTAllan]

Lowering the baud rate is very useful as you've mentioned and I would recommend keeping that DSL filter between the ViaTalk adapter and fax machine. One thing I didn't see you mention was ECM mode. ECM mode stands for Error Checking/Correction Mode and is a setting on many fax machines. You want this turned off, by default on every fax machine I've encountered it's set to on.

[hossnine]

I've had problems with the fax line service from Viatalk since day 1. They cannot seem to give me the service I need. Sometimes the fax quits after 1 page, sometimes after a couple, but for sure it won't get past 6 pages ever. I have a home office that I often send multiple page faxes and this is a pain. I pay an extra $9.95 each month for this priveledge? Anyone else have this experience? It is a new fax machine that worked with my previous legacy switch provider.

I'm in the same boat as others. I've done all the things that have been recommended by ViaTalk (dsl filter, error correction, baud rate wasn't available) to no avail. Viatalk tech support gave up.

Funny, I have 2 different lines with Viatalk and can't fax from either one. When I had VoIP line with Cox I didn't have a bit of problems. That tells me the problem either lies in my ATA or with Viatalk. Given that others are having the EXACT same problems, I'd say it is with Viatalk.

Viatalk has provided me with decent service and if past problems are any indication (DTMF) I'd say at some point down the road they will fix this problem.

[hossnine]

Sorry for the back to back posts gang. The idea of not being able to set the baud rate on my 7130 has bothered me so I did a little searching on the net. I found a link to an HP forum that explains how to manually set the baud rate (see below).

My question for ViaTalk support is, "which 9600 baud rate is recommended and/or required (V.17 9600 or V.29 9600)?"

(http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=734178&admit=-682735245+1167500298680+28353475)

[sbradshaw]

Actually, it could be something in the ATA. There are fax settings that can be adjusted. Your ATA probably just comes with the Linksys defaults, so you may need to tweaks some of them. For example, you may want to change the FAX Disable ECAN setting to "yes" and even play with the FAX Passthru Method setting. HTH.

-Scott

[hossnine]

Scott,

Thanks for the info. I did believe that I could have an ATA based issue. To be safe I forwarded all of the ATA configuration information to ViaTalk tech support for review and validation. The never asked for any changes to be made.

For edification and in hopes of helping others, here are my Siprua 2100 Fax settings:

FAX CED Detect Enable: Yes / No
FAX CNG Detect Enable: Yes / No
FAX Passthru Codec: G711u / G711a
FAX Codec Symmetric: Yes / No
FAX Passthru Method: None / NSE / ReINVITE
FAX Process NSE: Yes / No

Note: BOLD = selected option

Unfortunately, I don't have the FAX Disable ECAN or FAX Passthru Method -> HTH parameters on my Sipura 2100.

All help is appreciated and I'll continue researching in hopes that this problem can be resolved for everyone.

[sbradshaw]

Scott,

Thanks for the info. I did believe that I could have an ATA based issue. To be safe I forwarded all of the ATA configuration information to ViaTalk tech support for review and validation. The never asked for any changes to be made.

For edification and in hopes of helping others, here are my Siprua 2100 Fax settings:

FAX CED Detect Enable: Yes / No
FAX CNG Detect Enable: Yes / No
FAX Passthru Codec: G711u / G711a
FAX Codec Symmetric: Yes / No
FAX Passthru Method: None / NSE / ReINVITE
FAX Process NSE: Yes / No

Note: BOLD = selected option

Unfortunately, I don't have the FAX Disable ECAN or FAX Passthru Method -> HTH parameters on my Sipura 2100.

All help is appreciated and I'll continue researching in hopes that this problem can be resolved for everyone.

Sorry for the confusion. HTH = Hope This Helps.

The purpose of the Fax Disable ECAN is to have the ATA automatically turn off "echo cancellation" for you, so that you do not have to turn it off for voice calls as well. If you don't have this option, then you may just have to turn off echo cancellation globally. You may also want to try setting Fax Passthru Method to "ReINVITE" to see if that helps.

[sbradshaw]

Some interesting reading for Fax over IP:

http://www.soft-switch.org/foip.html

[Cobalt2112]

Hey guys, after some tooling around I got my fax to work over VT!

I was trying all sorts of suggested things (speed, dsl filter, holy water, pixie dust) but nothing worked. What did I do to get it going? I changed the Fax resolution from FINE to STANDARD as suggested in another forum and voila!

:yes:

[Britton]

I tried the fine to standard thing but that still didn't work.
Finally just got my first one to go through and here is what I did.

9600 modem speed
Error correction turned off

Got pap2 password and then changed on regional
input and output gain to -4, power output limit to 4
impedance to 600+2.16uF. This in combo with the other settings is what did the trick.

on the line 1 page set fax passthru to reinvite and fax disable ecan to yes.
I tested by sending to the ViaTalk fax that you send the LOA to. Refused to send the LOA over the Vonage adapter. Boy, must have sent probably 100 times over the weekend.

Can't guarantee this will work again but now I have hope as I've never even gotten close to completing a fax before these settings.

[Britton]

After my last post I tried a few more times and it was spotty. Then I ran across the upgrade firmware thread posted in the last few days. Upgraded to 5.1.2 from the 3.1.9(LSc) from the factory and then remembered faxing. Tried it with a 3 page fax to my work. Did it 6 times in a row and was successful each time. This may be the trick!! :D My faxes were set to be at standard not fine so I have yet to try that.

UPDATE: I changed my fax resolution to fine and sent a 9 page fax and it worked too!

[chas3]

I have faxing working much better now. Here's my settings and changes....

1. Upgrade firmware to the latest 5.1.3 for the PAP2T

2. Turn on FAX DISABLE ECAN. This setting doesn't seem to be a provisioned setting, probably because it is new to the firmware upgrade.

3. Lower the gain of the PAP2T. Original in and out gain setting was -3 and -3db. I changed it to -6db and -6db. I didn't try going lower but it might help. I noticed, that my phones have been significantly louder since switching to VT. Which has been good because I had a phone with an earbud that I used to have trouble hearing people talk. That phone has been much louder and still plenty loud even at the -6db setting. And this seems to improve faxing. Sometimes I think loud audio was being clipped.

4. When sending a fax, tell the fax to go at or below 9600 baud.

Test: I was sending a single page at fine resolution with EC on. I don't like faxes at standard resolution and so I refuse to change from fine. Also, I tried some with EC off which means the fax was sent with streaks, again, unacceptable to me. The test page had lots of detail and took 2.5 minutes at 9600, 4 minutes at 7200baud, 5.5 minutes at 4800 baud. This gives considerable time for errors to occur in the communication if they are going to.

I did play with FAX PASSTHRU METHOD some before I lowered the gain, but did not seem to do anything meaningful.

Results: Most test faxes transmitted sucessfully at 9600 baud, sometimes though, the faxes sent at 7200 or 4800 baud. But, at least they went on the first try. I tried a few at 14400, and I would say they went through about 50% of the time. According to Nyquist limits, 14400 shouldn't work at the codec sampling rates anyway. Great news is, 9600 baud is working for send. I use a free fax to email service for receive. My normal faxes, once or twice a week are not as complicated as my test fax and have a shorter phone call. I figure, shorter call, less chance of a glitch. (That is why I figure some people have success with standard resolution.)

conclusion: As I made each change, faxing got a little better. I think the firmware has a part, but never tried lowering the gain until after trying everything else. If these changes don't work for you, I would suggest trying -9db gains as long as you can still hear people ok. I think going down to -12db is acceptable by telco standards, but that is for receive gain, transmit might need to be higher, like -12 in, -6 out.
HTH :)

[chas3]

Haven't tried this yet, but wanted to get the idea in here....

Anyone thought about changing the jitter settings. See this link...
http://www.provu.co.uk/pdf/sipura/ip_faxing_sipura_linksys.pdf
The general idea is that fax machines need a clean signal but they don't mind extra delay as long as it is consistent.
The default PAP2T setting is for HIGH jitter and allow UP AND DOWN jitter adjustment. This is great for voice as it will adjust to lower jitter levels when things are good, which creates less voice delay. But, if jitter occurs, it may give some pops/clicks until the jitter buffer can fill up again.
For faxing, setting the jitter buffer to VERY HIGH and DISABLEing jitter adjustment will force consistent large buffer sizes (and longer consistent delays).

If this is an important setting, maybe Linksys can add a FAX mode setting for this to overide the voice mode setting??

Like I said, I haven't tried it yet, but it looks good in concept. Post test results and feedback.

[phallesy]

After trying all the suggestions I could find (and trying several different fax machines) I gave up and just forwarded my fax number to a fax-to-email number.

[chas3]

Does seem to help to set jitter buffer to ExTREMELY HIGH and jitter adjust to disable. With that and a -6 gain setting, I can get some faxes through at 14400 baud and most through on first try at 9600 baud.
I tried a DSL filter, but didn't seem to make any change.

Faxing is good enough for what I need, but could be a hassle for someone using it for business.

[shermanay]

How to upgrade firmware on that linksys voip box?

[sbradshaw]

How to upgrade firmware on that linksys voip box?

To upgrade the firmware on the Linksys, you first need to download the appropriate one from the Linksys website (PAP2 or PAP2T). You will also need the admin password from VT in order to perform the firmware installation. If you don't want to do this yourself, I have heard of individuals who called VT Tech Support, and they did the upgrade remotely for them.

[chas3]

If VT can remotely do the upgrade, I'm not sure I understand why they wouldn't want to upgrade everyone. Seems like the new firmware increases stability.

[NotGood2BeHere]

I've had problems with the fax line service from Viatalk since day 1. They cannot seem to give me the service I need. Sometimes the fax quits after 1 page, sometimes after a couple, but for sure it won't get past 6 pages ever. I have a home office that I often send multiple page faxes and this is a pain. I pay an extra $9.95 each month for this priveledge? Anyone else have this experience? It is a new fax machine that worked with my previous legacy switch provider.

I have been having problems with ViaTalk, too, from day 1! This is insane! Sunrocket's Voip Fax service worked PERFECTLY! I called ViaTalk today, and spoke with someone; the usual run around is what I got, and then I was TOLD I could go into my account and select, "GotFax," but I found that to be extremely disturbing when I checked into it. GotFax is a sister company to ViaTalk, so how convenient that ViaTalk makes it's difficult to use your fax machine, because GotFax CHARGES YOU; the sister company to ViaTalk; who by the way receives that income. I find this INTENTIONAL. I did an online search for FREE EMAIL TO FAX, and I found this one service, but you can only send two short faxes per day; under 30kb, but I will continue to search longer for an all-inclusive FREE SERVICE and post it here another time. I literally found this site in 30 seconds, so I imagine with more effort I will find the service we all want. This is the service I mentioned already: http://www.freefaxbutton.com. I'm not sure we can stay with a telephone company who resorts to this kind of unethical practice and providing poor service; especially when other VOIP services offer a 100% workable fax output.

[doxola]

Never had a problem using my fax on the 2nd line from ViaTalk (knocking on wood over here, now...)

I have TimeWarner cable internet, and have upgraded my fax machine twice since joining VT. Ditched a Panasonic plain paper fax for a Sharp plain paper fax. Panasonic had those older type ribbon roller ink replacement, while the Sharp takes inkjet cartridges, much like a printer--less hassle.