Fax machines over 3CX and SIP

[gilgamesh]

I'm helping a small charity (less than 30 staff) that has two offices and two fax machines convert over to 3CX. Because of a government project for internet in Australia called NBN the PSTN services will eventually be decommissioned they are also moving to a SIP service. The issue is with the fax machines.
I have approached several companies to supply and configure ATAs but they all say that Fax over ATA is unreliable and they would recommend "Fax as a Service". This leads to an issue as the charity has to fax through 30 page government forms quite regularly and the services I have seen are a per page charge so would end up costing them a lost more than traditional faxing.
An option of scanning and e-mailing was looked at but the people they send to / receive from don't work that way.

In summary their position is that they have to keep the fax machines. So I was wondering what the experiences of fax over sip using 3CX the forum members have had including any issues to look out for.
The sip provider does support the T.38 protocol for faxing.
I see that the Welltech ATA172plus-PoE is supported by 3CX but this does not seem to be available in Australia so an alternative would be used. So what issues were experienced using alternatives would be worth reading.

Thank you

 

[leejor]

The fact that your provider supports t.38, is a good first step. I have successfully used some Linksys ATA's along with Fax machines. I would think that any brand name ATA, that supports t.38, and is set-up correctly, should work without many problems. Faxing over VoIP is still not without issues from time to time, and can come down to the make (and settings) of the fax machine. The problem you may encounter might be, that unless the device is officially "supported" , you may have to manual configure, which could be a tricky if you don't have a lot of experience with SIP. As a staring point, once you choose an ATA,you may want to provision it to register directly with the VoIP provider, to start with, send some faxes to see how that goes. If all is OK, then put 3CX in the middle.

Someone else in Australia, could probably suggest an ATA readily available locally.

 

[briankayser]

I don't know if available in Australia, but after much hair pulling (trying numerous models), the best ATA's I've found that work the best for me are actually OBIHAI. Other ones I tried just never negotiated good. They would connect, squeal, hang-up, redial, sometimes work, but usually fail.

I've used both the OBi200 and the OBi202 (dual line). I just turn off the OBIHAI service. You have to manually configure but it isn't that hard. I actually wrote up a configuration guide for my guys here so if you can get these and you want to try them, let me know and I'll share the steps.

 

[[email protected]]

I don't know if available in Australia, but after much hair pulling (trying numerous models), the best ATA's I've found that work the best for me are actually OBIHAI. Other ones I tried just never negotiated good. They would connect, squeal, hang-up, redial, sometimes work, but usually fail.

I've used both the OBi200 and the OBi202 (dual line). I just turn off the OBIHAI service. You have to manually configure but it isn't that hard. I actually wrote up a configuration guide for my guys here so if you can get these and you want to try them, let me know and I'll share the steps.

I use Flowroute as our SIP provider, they support T38, and played with an Obihai ATA 202. I had little luck. I would love to have the steps you used to setup, if you're still willing to pass them along. Thanks

 

[[email protected]]

I should correct that slightly. I was able to get an old analog phone to work fine over it but didn't have much success with the fax machine.

 

[revilo951]

Hi Jeff,

I'm currently in a similar position. Did you end up getting anything working?

 

[Allen_Miller]

I don't know if you can find something similar but my company in the US uses Vitelity which does a fax over IP, but not using SIP or T38. Seems to be more reliable. FaxxBochs is another product that I believe works similarly.
Good luck.