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Using PSTN Fax line as a 2nd Voice line

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Using PSTN Fax line as a 2nd Voice line
« on: April 07, 2009, 10:52:16 AM »
Hi
How well does Sail handle a PSTN Fax line if we were to share it as a 2nd incoming voice line?

Would it be better to have a duet tone on the line and switch it before the Hardware card and Sail?
Regards

Gordon............

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Re: Using PSTN Fax line as a 2nd Voice line
« Reply #1 on: April 07, 2009, 11:19:30 AM »
Asterisk is not good at handling FAX and voice on the same analogue line.  It takes a good few seconds for Asterisk to recognise FAX tones and, of course, it tries to do this on every inbound call.  I am also pretty sure that there is a bug in our shared analogue/FAX handling within SAIL, which doesn't help.  Analogue FAX is very rare in our customer base because most of them choose to send and receive fax digitally over their ISDN lines.  Those that don't, tend to have dedicated FAX circuits.

Let us know what you decide and how you get on.  If you run into trouble, just yell and we'll try to help.

Kind Regards

S





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Re: Using PSTN Fax line as a 2nd Voice line
« Reply #2 on: April 07, 2009, 11:43:27 PM »
Thanks Jeff

With those thoughts in mind I think I will use a duet switch to split the fax call directly to the Fax machine. It sounds like it is easier to understand ring tones than answer and split fax handshakes.

Can Sail route different ring tones on one line?
Regards

Gordon............

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Re: Using PSTN Fax line as a 2nd Voice line
« Reply #3 on: April 08, 2009, 02:07:38 AM »
'Fraid not.  As far as I know there is no mechanism in Zap to recognise ring cadence/tone.  I may well be wrong on that because I've never looked at the zap analogue code.  Maybe Google can help.  There is a tool, I think it is called nvfax, which I believe is better than vanilla zaptel but I haven't played with it.  You may be able to route your zap call into a custom app and then use nvfax.

Best

S