FAX over IP Network

[richardfu]

We are planning to integrate our FAX over IP Network, and receive the inbound FAX to electronic document file. How is the solution working? any suggestion will be approciate.

Environment: Callmanager cluster 4.1, Unity 4.1 and IPCCx 4.0, voice gateway 3825.

Thanks,

[Jonathan Schulenberg · Accepted solution]

Most customers purchase a fax server such as SageCom's XMediusFAX to provide electronic faxing. In that scenario, CUCM routes the call to the fax server which negotiates a protocol switchover to T.38 with the receiving PSTN gateway.

If that is not an option for you, your only other option for electronics faxing (i.e. no physical machine that prints/scans it) would be to use T.37 store-and-forward to some other product such as an email server.

[richardfu]

Thanks Jonathan.  We do requested to use our Cisco IP Telephony to complete this task and not third party application, since we have Unity system, and probably can think about IP Fax Service on Unity system.

[Steven Holl · Accepted solution]

If you go with a T.38 fax server (which is the way to go in my opinion), keep in mind that CM 4.1 doesn't have T.38 support, so you can't get a switchover to T.38 to work on MGCP endpoints (you can't do CA-controlled MGCP T.38 on 4.1).  If you have H323 or SIP to your PSTN gateway, though, then you'll be able to integrate it to the T.38 fax server fine.  CM 4.2, 6.0 and higher have this support.

[richardfu]

Thanks Steven. Our 3825 voice gateway are running MGCP with Callmanager 4.1 cluster, so will not works as per your comments here. And we also planned upgrading to CUCM v7 at a later time.

Any difference if we use FXS Card connected on voice gateway?

Thanks,

[Steven Holl]

You won't get any MGCP endpoint to switch to T.38 to a T.38 fax server, regardless of the type of endpoint, since MGCP before CM 4.2/6.0 only did switchovers via NSE.  The third party T.38 server doesn't know what an NSE is, since it is a proprietary switchover.