Anyone Have a method for verifying FAX transmission?

[TipandRingtoSIP]

Ok, let me start by saying I hate FAX machines... I work for a Health Care provider, so I have around 80 to 100 of the buggers that are connected to various switches and or IPDA's that I am responsible for. So my question is, does anyone have a method of testing fax transmission quality other than placing a phone call from the fax line?? I am constantly getting tickets from users who have FAX quality issues, who have been told by the technicians responsible for the fax machines, that the problem is "with the phone line". It drives me crazy. It's like the automatic reply from some of these guys. I don't see any clocking issues on my facilities, so I'm pretty sure it's not being caused by the analog station. I'd be interested to know what any of you folks out there have used for testing these things...

Thanks!

 

[donb01]

My one word for a solution to that many faxes, assuming you have DID, is RightFax (RF). I have been using it over 6 years with excellent results and I am the phone guy for a hospital with 6 other connected sites plus a few more. With RightFax you have no more faxes mying in trays or copiers waiting for pickup and there for anyone to look at - everything goes in a mailbox. For outgoing, we are saving pallets of paper a year because the documents they usually print to paper and stick in a fax machine get printed right to RF, those at the "front desk" who have scanners now can scan directly in, and others go to the copier and scan to their E-mail and just attach the resulting file or high volume departments have their own scanner with a document feeder. We do not give everyone their own fax number because we have too many people, but instead assign one to three (depending on what they have now or department groups) mailboxes per department. In our case there is a central server that has a T1 board that conencts to a T1 on the PBX and provides 23 "fax lines", and then client software that goes on each PC that needs access. We use ISDN PRI for our primary trunking. It also supports many other connection methods and protocols, as well as direct connection to MS Exchange and web-based access. They even have software modules to interact with maybe 20 different kinds of copiers so you can actually send out right from the copier over the network. We also have AVST CX-E for voicemail and Unified Messaging and RF can deliver messages to those mailboxes and also you can have your fax calls come in on your office extension and it will route them to RF. In RightFax for Fax status it will tell you if it was successful, or if it wasn't it will have error codes that once you have the "translation document" P will tell you the most likely issue with a line, like "loop current drop", "transmission errors", etc...

Anyway, in relation to the actual question, I have had a variety of issues with analog and vendors for years, and I have a bit of an attitude... Part of it is because we use ISDN PRI trunking and there are some limits on the hardware in some cases. Back in the internet days here no one could connect faster than 28.8K on an outgoing call from an analog call - I was told it had something to do with how much the hardware can handle. I have had the same situation fax vendor blames my phone line, I point back at the fax vendor. The way I end the discussion is I plug an analog phone into the line, dial a digit to break dial tone, and if it's quiet it's not my line so go away. It could be a bad line cord or a bad channel on the PRI, it could be that if faxes are piled on only a few boards and they are busy a lot you could be generating more traffic than the board can handle well - try spreading them out, or if you put faxes on with a busy call center it could be the same way... It's almost impossible to troubleshoot without expensive equipment. Normally if you have bad call quality you can hear it in your ear. If you have any kind of call traffic analyzer you could make a report to monitor the fax lines and see if there is a common trunk or trunk channel that seems to have issues - put a butt set on each analog trunk and break dial tone to see if there is any noise on the trunk. If you ask the phone company to check them you will get a "no problem found" report most of the time.

In other news, I have had trouble with faxes using direct outside lines that are multiplexed using a "PairGain" device because the provider didn't have enough copper coming into the building for as many lines as you needed, and also fax machines that are behind an RJ31X jack for a security system because if the system dials out for a line test call it will unceremoniously drop your fax call. Lines run over the top of fluorescent fixtures can have induced noise as well as a few other induction sources that can be on the desk, including an IP phone.

Anyway - there's my nickle's worth )


Don Bruechert, Voice Comm Analyst II
CareTech Solutions @ Holy Family Memorial
Manitowoc, WI, USA

 

[TipandRingtoSIP]

Hey Don, Yeah, all my trunks for outbound to the public network are PRI, and between my sites is Cornet IP. I have the same attitude with these guys, I have no static issue with these fax extensions. I can place and receive clear phone calls with my butt set, or test phone (patient room analog). I have the fax techs who are vendors, and the PC techs who are direct employees, pointing and saying it has to be the 4000 because there are too many faxes failing... Now I can't determine if the people are trying to fax to an internal extension or not, but if they are, I know that's going to be problematic. We have a bunch of latency on our network, but I cannot get the network guys to admit, or fix the issue. So faxes over Cornet I'm pretty sure are going to fail. The one site that I am really having a problem at, has only one PRI span, and it is the clock source for the 4000. I see 107 ESF hits, 2 ES and 2 OES in the last 24hours. Doesn't look like a synch issue to me. We have a couple of departments using RF but the whole place is migrating to EPIC this weekend, and as part of the cut over they are going to another external fax service provider, who's name I forget at this moment... The only thing I can think of is that our telco provider has a backbone that is pure VOIP. I'm suspecting they may be the cause of some slight degradation, which is causing the fax failure...Oh yeah, pair gain..... SLC96's = good times!

Well, Thanks for the reply, we need to exchange phone numbers, I bet we have the same work environment, or fairly close...

Bruce.

 

[LoPath]

ES= Errored seconds, OES=Out of service errored seconds. BAD news! Need to get the PRI fixed!

LoPath
Maintain HiPath 4000 V5 & V6, OpenScape Xpert V4, Xpressions, Contact Center

 

[donb01]

Yeah, I'm with you on the phone number thing - it never hirts.

Those PRI stats you posted are "fine". If you have a real error those numbers will climb up there, and if you check the counter every 15 minutes they will still be climbing. Those are 24 hour stats, so I doubt that's an issue. I'm in the same boat you are with the network, but most of it is at one site. I get maybe 80+ "bad IP quality" notices a day in my HISTA log, and 99% of them either originate or terminate in that one building. Of course all the Cisco gear has an innocent look on its face and a halo, and SolarWinds says there is nothing going on, so that is good enough for them - computers will deal with at crap, but not phones. I ended up disabling the Bad IP Quality reports because I have more important things I want to see in the logs. I have an application from Impact Technologies called Traffic Analyst, and that really helps me track down a lot of things other than at the network level, and they added on another product that gives all the network monitoring now too that I am hoping to get next year and maybe find some answers. Ours is a non-profit, so they squeeze the wallet pretty tight.

As far as the latency issue goes, plain old fax machines are pretty forgiving if you're not having huge dropouts in the comm. Some they can give you a little insight on the number of calls on your trunk groups in either direction. I am doing this from home so I can't remember the AMO - I think it's something like TMFU - maybe DIS-TMFU:BP,ALL,N; (that last N would be a Y if you want to clear the counters). I don't use that as much anymore since I got TA so I can't remember if that's still an AMO. I don't know how many shelves you have at your remote sites, but remember each NCUI card only provides 50 speech paths, so if you have a lot of traffic between sites that can be a factor. If you are using OpenStage HFA or the 400 series Optipoints you should make sure that DMC (Direct Media Connect) is enabled on your stations in the Basic3 tab of assistant. Unless your network is horrible, your internal calls will go through a high series of resources to set up the call between the two phones, and then the phones will negotiate a direct peer-peer connection between themselves and most of those resources will drop off except for one signalling path that will remain to monitor the call. This can really help with network load if you rare not doing it. Unfortunately internal Analog calls do not have that ability so they will consume a higher amount of resources, and there's nothing you can really do about that except request the remote users send faxes to the other sites using external numbers rather than just their extensions.

If you guys are looking at a "hosted" fax solution that everyone seems to be pushing now, I would have 2 questions for the network folks - what % of your available internet bandwidth are you currently using, and how reliable is your service? Unless you are going to have a direct SIP connection to the hosting provider or some other solution. I am not yet trusting of the "all eggs in one basket" scenario - especially in our community!

Good luck! )


Don Bruechert, Voice Comm Analyst II
CareTech Solutions @ Holy Family Memorial
Manitowoc, WI, USA

 

[TipandRingtoSIP]

Yeah, I posted those stats just to show that there WASN'T anything wrong with the span.. 2 hits in error seconds is not an issue.. So, what I found out was that our provider, takes the PRI directly to an AdTran router onsite and converts it to VOIP and sends it out on their fiber backbone there at the DMARC.. They ended up finding some configuration mismatches in the router, and things look to be working now... But really, the only way I was able to test anything, was by sending faxes back and forth.. What a pain! I should have mentioned, that this site is it's own stand alone Openscape 4000 v7, and not an IPDA...Thanks for the tip on the DMC setting, I'll take a look at my HFA Optipoints and see if we have that enabled or not...