Switching to digital fax lines?

[Bobby Gurba]

I am looking to switch over to digital fax lines, but have no idea where to start. Right now we have about 8 analog modem cards on a board, which is connected to our 'fax server' which runs fax @dvantage. I know there is something out there where I can buy a certain type of card that will use DID to split the line up, etc...I might not be explaining it exactly but I think I got the point across (hopefully).

How hard is it to set something like that up? What exactly is involved?

Thanks in advance for your help, always appreciated.

Rob

[Jeff Zylstra]

Hi Rob,

I don't believe that Applied supports any fax modems that support "digital" phone lines directly.  The only hardware that they support that does Direct Inward Dialing for faxing is the Brooktrout (now Cantata) fax modems, and I don't think that they support fax cards that handle digital lines like T-1/PRI line directly.   

I've been using my analog Brooktrout TR-200 card with T-1 lines for years now, but I'm also not doing DID.  We use a Panasonic "hybrid" system here that uses T-1 lines coming in, but converts the modem lines to analog lines for the TR-200.


My phone guy swears up and down that he can send the proper DID signals from a T-1 line, through the phone system, and to an analog DID capable modem, should I choose to go that route.  My office is small enough that the receptionist can handle that easily, so it's not an issue for me.  I bet that your phone may be capable of that too.  I'd be very careful though, since there's no guarantees of compatibility.

[Bobby Gurba]

Sorry if my questions come off as a little weird, I am fairly new to the fax/phone line game. So with your set up do you have a line (phone line) from each card to the appropriate rj-11 jack? It just seems like the set up that i have now is very outdated and too complex for its own good. I don't know the last time it was upgrade but it has been a WHILE. I guess what I am looking for is a more simple setup for my Fax @avantage server so that it is not a mess.

Thanks again for your help.

[insurebaltimore]

Applied will not support anything but a good ol' fashioned analog POTS line.  Now that we have the disclaimer out of the way...

I have PRI's going into an Avaya IP Office PBX w/ analog ports, w/ the RJ-11 going to the same old modems I've been using for a decade.  I will, on occasion, get some noise on the faxes (horizontal banding) that can only be cured by rebooting the phone system.  This happens maybe once a year or so.  Other than that...  no problems at all.

The reason I went this way was b/c I wanted to get away from the "per minute" charge of faxes.  I had unlimited local on my PRI's.  I didn't go the Brooktrout route b/c so much of that stuff was up in the air at the time.  In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't since the old boards were replaced and support was dropped.

[Jeff Zylstra]

Sorry if my questions come off as a little weird, I am fairly new to the fax/phone line game. So with your set up do you have a line (phone line) from each card to the appropriate rj-11 jack? It just seems like the set up that i have now is very outdated and too complex for its own good. I don't know the last time it was upgrade but it has been a WHILE. I guess what I am looking for is a more simple setup for my Fax @avantage server so that it is not a mess.

Thanks again for your help.

No, I am doing the same as what Jason is doing; running my brooktrout off from analog ports on my phone system.  These ports are converting the digital signal from the incoming T-1 lines into analog signals through the phone system.  Each one of the phones on my system has one "XDP" port that is allows an analog telecom device like and single line telephone, fax machine or fax modem to be plugged into it.  HTH.