SIP/IAX Windows Software Modem
Submitted by kspare on Sat, 09/27/2008 - 10:52pm.
I used to use a program on my desktop that would emulate serial ports, and I could connect directly to a cisco router and dial out it's pots lines. Worked great, saved my company a ton of money on phone lines....
I'm wondering why we can't do something similar to that with asterisk? Everyone and their dog has fax servers out there. I've always used GFI's Faxmaker for sending/receiving faxes, and as I sell more and more phone systems to people who had these systems i'm moving the receive side to hylafax.
GFI is great, people can fax directly from outlook as long as they have an internet connection, and I know people will say dump gfi and run hylafax, but what my customers enjoy is just using outlook, so until I can integrate hylafax and exchange i'm stuck.
So in the meantime, i'm trying to figure out how I can setup say, 4 virtual modems on my fax server to replace the hardware modems that connect to a linksys ata. So my GFI fax software see's 4 com ports with 4 generic modems that are softmodems connecting directly to my trixbox.
Seems like it would be fairly simply, but I can't find anything yet.
has anyone done any of this yet???
 
Not sure I exactly
Sun, 09/28/2008 - 12:11am
Not sure I exactly understand your application, however this may help. Me have been using these port servers from Connect Tech called Blue Heat. They run clean at 128k so I imagine the fax application would work like a champ.
http://www.connecttech.com/sub/Products/Ethernet_to_serial_BlueHe...
Let me know what you think.
--
Scott
aka "Skyking"
 
I guess the clearest way to
Sun, 09/28/2008 - 6:48am
I guess the clearest way to put this, is I'm looking for Iaxmodem but for windows.
 
fax from desktop
Sun, 09/28/2008 - 7:03am
I have customers who use http://vitelity.net
they have a Windows fax software which allows them to fax from the computer
plus a webbased GUI
it is cheap at $3.00 a month and .03 a min.
 
Thats great and all, but
Sun, 09/28/2008 - 7:07am
Thats great and all, but doesn't help me. I have a windows based fax solution already, I want to eliminate the modems and the atas, with a software based modem like iaxmodem.
 
fax from desktop
Sun, 09/28/2008 - 7:31am
I have customers who use http://vitelity.net
they have a Windows fax software which allows them to fax from the computer
plus a webbased GUI
it is cheap at $3.00 a month and .03 a min.
you can do MANY things with the service it is setup so that you can do branded reselling as well
The windows software is easy to use BUT it does not tie into outlook but with address in the built in addy book you can send a fax in about ten clicks of the mouse (XLS, doc, pdf. jpeg, text, and more)
multi-accounts / emaiks / DID..... blah blah.............
 
modem share
Sun, 09/28/2008 - 7:34am
I do not think you will have much luck in replacing modem share with anything, that stuff died out years ago, as it should have.
Faxing should just die already, we need e-sig's to be main stream and dump ALL those pots lines
I do not know why it post half of my post then the second half....
 
I agree. I'd love to get rid
Sun, 09/28/2008 - 7:45am
I agree. I'd love to get rid of faxing, however, faxing is still HUGE! I'd love to get rid of GFI and just use hylafax, but my customers have grown to love faxing directly from outlook, which is also easy for me. I don't have to open ports for fax clients to connect to fax servers, everything is just done through outlook and RPC over HTTPS.
In reality if I could get rid of gfi and use hylafax for everything my problems would be solved, but I haven't figured out how to have hylafax pick up the faxes the would be routed to it.
So it's one route or the other, I would have thought that if iaxmodem is available for linux there might be a windows version available.
I'm kinda surprised i'm the first person trying to integrate exchange and hylafax as well......
 
emailing
Sun, 09/28/2008 - 8:40am
Well with the fax service you can email from outlook.
you email the file a single attachment to some phone number@emailyourfax.com
 
What we need is a program that connects a virtual serial port fr
Sun, 09/28/2008 - 9:28am
What we need is a program that connects a virtual serial port from Windows into Linux.
If you can do that, then you can hook iaxmodem into windows via the virtual serial port.
 
It's messy but you could use
Sun, 09/28/2008 - 11:23am
It's messy but you could use those Blue Heat's. Instead of binding iaxmodem to virtual tty's bind it to physical. Now use a crossover cable to the port servers. Install the port server software on the windows box and you now have extended the virtual ports over tcp/ip.
--
Scott
aka "Skyking"
 
My goal is to eliminate
Sun, 09/28/2008 - 1:52pm
My goal is to eliminate hardware all together just like hylafax and asterisk do it via iax modem. It just works great!
The reason we want to keep outlook is that while some programs allow you to email 13065551212@domain.com to send a fax, gfi allows the person to go through their contacts use the persons fax contact and send directly to that. It works VERY well the way we have it now, contact management is easy, you enter a fax number where is says fax number and when you go to fax you pick that from your contacts. Very simple, customers love it. But from an infrastructure side as we do more with asterisk i'm seeing a way to eliminate some hardware.
I guess I'll scrap this and start looking at how to integrate exchange 2003 with hylafax for sending faxes instead.
 
Fax over IP
Mon, 09/29/2008 - 7:05am
Hi,
Would Fax Over IP (FOIP) be a good solution in your situation? It would eliminate the hardware. All faxing would be done via your current PABX, thus avoiding additional lines. GFI FAXmaker does support FOIP as per http://kbase.gfi.com/showarticle.asp?id=KBID001220
Nicholas Sciberras
GFI Software - www.gfi.com
Messaging, Content Security & Network Security Software
 
Making Fax over IP with gfi
Mon, 09/29/2008 - 7:21am
Making Fax over IP with gfi is quite expensive, I looked into the cost of the brook trout foip cards and they are definitely not cheap. Faxmaker does not talk directly to Asterisk. I like the gfi product, and would not mind keeping it, I just want to eliminate all the hardware sitting on shelves between the servers with gfi running and the pbx's.
 
Making fax over H323 with Timefax
Thu, 11/06/2008 - 10:33am
In case you're still interested, there seem to be plenty solutions for *nix, including asterisk. For Windows, I've managed to find these:
Timefax (http://sourceforge.net/projects/timefax) is a virtual fax driver made from a virtual modem (com0com (http://com0com.sourceforge.net/) and a H323 fax driver (t38modem http://sourceforge.net/projects/t38modem). Both components can be downloaded separately from different opensource sites.
Theoretically, It could be adapted to sip with a SIP<->h323 solution, or by adapting it to activate the sip capacity of the included t38modem driver.
(If you make it work with sip, please tell me how to).
Kapanga (www.kapanga.net) offers a trialware sip-based VoIP solution including fax. It is somehow tricky to configurate.
 
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2007-02-16