Mango
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|  [Poll] T.38 Fax Driver
Today I had what I thought was a great idea which was to use a T.38 Fax Driver to send faxes off my PC. This way, I could (in theory at least) send faxes from any application without needing to connect my computer to an ATA, and as a bonus I wouldn't need to worry about packet loss and friends.
I could only find one T.38 Fax Driver. It was part of the Windows version of Zoiper Biz. Looks like it costs about 30 euros which is more than I'd like to spend because the whole point of this exercise is to send faxes as inexpensively as possible, since I send about two faxes per year.
The way I see it, I have a few options. Pick your favourite. If you have an opinion, feel free to elaborate on it. I will write them in order of my preference.
a) Mango, your Google skills suck. There is a great free T.38 fax driver that works perfectly at [URL].
b) Mango, you claim to be a programmer. Why don't you write an open-source T.38 Fax Driver? I've actually never written a device driver for anything, though I have a friend who used to write device drivers for Microsoft and might be willing to help. I'm reading RFC 3362 at the moment; anything else I should be reading?
c) Mango, T.38 is just too much of a headache to deal with. If you even try to write a T.38 fax driver, you'll lose your job, your house will burn down, and you'll be forced to move to some town with no CLEC. Use G.711 instead. (If you choose this option please say why. I've found a lot of posts that say "T.38 sucks!" but nobody says why.)
d) Mango, you forgot a very important option in this poll. What you should REALLY do is [stuff].
m. 
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PX Eliezer
Premium
join:2008-08-09
New Jersey
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1 edit | Never was good at multiple choice. 
My wife has been sending faxes using a Free account at Box.Net, as has been written about in this forum.
»Re: [VoIPo] potential new user questions: codec, outbound faxing
It will send out various file formats. We did find that for a MS Word document, the "doc" format will work, but the "docx" will not. The service also works with PDF and some other formats.
They send you an email when the fax is sent (usually just a few minutes).
The fax service does involve J2 but you are not registering with J2 and not directly involved with J2. |
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usa2k
Please PRAY for Rebekah
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join:2003-01-26
Canton, MI
clubs:
1 edit | reply to Mango
And would you need a [FAX] modem?
I say leave FAX to what it works best on |
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Mango
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4 edits | reply to Mango
This may do the trick. Still reading...
»www.opalvoip.org/ with »www.hylafax.org/
Edit: looks like HylaFAX is for large-volume faxing and is overkill for what I want to do.
I have discovered a project called t38modem. It looks like this is based on Opal. I've downloaded the source because I can't find a Windows binary. I'm installing Visual C++ now to compile it. Apparently, on Windows, you use it with this: »com0com.sourceforge.net/
Edit: I got com0com working. It did have a binary and was very simple to install.
Edit: Getting t38modem to compile is easier said than done. My lack of C++ knowledge is not helping.
Edit: Got t38modem compiled. Now I have to figure out how to use it.
m. |
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Mango
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3 edits | reply to Mango
I think I'm getting farther.
I can send a fax to my phone number, and when I answer, I hear fax tones. But when I send a fax to an actual fax machine (I tried a few) it doesn't work. The error is "There is no answer".
Here's the command I'm using:
C:\Desktop\t38modem-1.1.0\opal\Release>t38modem -n -o t38modem.log -tttt -p \\.\CNCB0 --sip-proxy [my username]:[my password]@callcentric.com --sip-register [my username]@callcentric.com,[my password] --route "modem:.*=sip:<dn>@callcentric.com"
Edit: I'm stumped for now. I've posted in their forums. The author seems to be pretty good at replying to forum posts. Fingers crossed.
m.
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toro
join:2006-01-27
Scarborough, ON
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| reply to Mango
I don't have any suggestion for a free solution, but for a paid one, this one seems to work really well:
»www.t38faxvoip.com
It creates a virtual COM port so you can use it with any fax software that supports serial modems. |
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Mango
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| Cool; looks like they have a trial version; I will check it out.
I discovered that the free version of Zoiper can supposedly fax a TIF file. However, I was not able to make this work. It took over six minutes to fax a single page. At the end, it said it completed successfully, but the fax never arrived at the other end.
m.
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celtic
join:2001-02-08
USA
| You might find something here.
»sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_···T.38+Fax
Or give this a try. Fax is so ... outdated.
»sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator |
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usa2k
Please PRAY for Rebekah
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Canton, MI
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|  Re: [Poll] T.38 Fax Driver
An annoyance I ran into with is excellent PDF print tool.
A PDFForge toolbar or some such may get installed, and any bad (404) URL would spam me with a website not of my choosing.
I thought it was a DNS redirect, but uninstalling PDFForge, keeping PDFCreator, solved this issue. (FF3 and Vista64.)
--
Jim, VoIP since 12/2002, VOIPo 2/7/2007
FAH-Tool ... Whales ... USA2K site ... Artist-247 |
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Mango
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| reply to Mango
Re: [Poll] T.38 Fax Driver
I still haven't got t38modem to work, and I thought it might be useful for someone more knowledgeable than me to see a dump of the SIP headers:
»toao.net/pub/with-register.html
»toao.net/pub/without-register.html
If anyone reading this has successfully done T.38 with Callcentric, I'd be interested to hear how you did it, whether with hard or software.
m.
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Mango's recommended PAP2T settings: »www.toao.net/25/linksys-pap2t-vo···-review/
Linksys/Cisco dial plan tips and tricks: »www.toao.net/108/cisco-dial-plan···-tricks/ |
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Test99
Premium
join:2003-04-24
San Jose, CA
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·InPhonex
| reply to Mango
Re: [Poll] T.38 Fax Driver
Some years back, a link was posted in this forum to an article on T.38 by someone who clearly knew a great deal about the subject.
A search of this forum turned up 149 pages of references to T.38. My patience ran out after checking a mere 14 pages, some of which contained now-broken links. So I can't provide a link to the article.
From memory, the article said that the T.38 specification left a great deal to be desired, with many open issues. In some cases, the "standard" left implementers to make their own decisions about issues that seriously impacted interoperability with other implementations.
For me, the take-home message about T.38 was that its specification is flawed beyond redemption. Perhaps it will soon be time to take fax and T.38 off life support and let nature take its course. |
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Mango
toao.net
join:2008-12-25
Vancouver, BC | After a great many hours unsuccessfully playing with T38Modem, I'm highly tempted to agree.
Now I just have to convince my customers to place all their orders online :-/
m. |
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Test99
Premium
join:2003-04-24
San Jose, CA | .. Or use a service that receives faxes from your customers and emails them to you. |
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