Brother fax machine unable to fax to ATA186

[averheaghe]

We have a customer with a Brother 4750E fax machine. They are unable to fax multi page documents to our fax machines attached to ATA186. They are able to send with out a problem to other non-ATA fax machines. No one else has mentioned a problem. Any ideas how to troubleshoot this?

Thanks,

Andy

[paolo bevilacqua]

Hi Andy,

Fax with ATA can and does often present problems. To begins with, which protocol are you using on the ATA and which exact firmware version ?

Also, do you connect to PSTN with T1 ? Could you check output of 'show controllers T1' on the voice GW, verify that there are no slips.

[averheaghe]

g711ulaw is the protocol and the firmware is ATA030203SCCP051201A.zup.

We do connect thru a 2821 via T1 (PRI) and the router shows no slips.

Could this be a transimision speed issue?

The Brother 4750e moves at 33.6Kbps

[paolo bevilacqua]

Hi,

the general consensus is that H.323 images are 'better' than SCCP for fax on the ATA. I have no personal experience on that but the reports come from multiple people here. In addition, there are recommended settings for Fax on ATA, you can search CCO for these terms.

Unfortunately I know that sometime fax machines, even without VoIP, just don't work with some other machine. I can be wrong, but I think to remember that 'brother' is one having problems.

For sure, try to lower the speed on the brother if possible at all.

Good luck!

[allan.thomas]

One important key factor is that Super G3 Faxes are not supported because they use 33.6 kbps to establish the call the ATA only supports speeds up to 14.4 kbps.

Regards

Allan.

[aalejo]

Remember this:

- ATA only allows speeds below 14.4K

- ATA have 2 modes

Passtrough using NSE and Fax Only(no NSE)

- Faxes also depens on Router configs. If Router is configured for passtrough, ATA should be configured for passtrough only.

- ATA load have been historically buggy for sending Faxes, same with routers.

- Test all fax modes and debug NSE packets if fax passtrough is being used.

- Fax protocol using passthough or fax mode is very sensible to IP packet lost. If you lost more that 0.1% packets, fax quality will be awfull or will fail.

- ATA and routers does not support G3 upspeeding to 33.4K

- H323 and MGCP configs for faxes are very different. There are bug for MGCP and H323 for faxing.