Hello, New to the list. I work for a regional broadband ISP who is looking to also become an ITSP. We are looking for a good SIP termination provider with reasonable rates to all of North America that also happens to guarantee T.38 gateway support for 100% of calls. Currently, we are using FlowRoute. We are happy with the service, but the odds of us hitting a gateway (through one of their upstreams) that will accept our T.38 re-INVITE are about 50/50...not very good. We tried Gafachi, but that was not a good experience. Their rate table is all kinds of screwed-up. The only other one I've been able to find in my searches is Alcazar Networks. Anybody have any first-hand experience with them who can vouch for them as well as their T.38 support for the wholesale termination product? Other recommendations are also welcome, as well. Although we may someday go down the road of loading an LCR table into our SBC, at this point we are looking for a single solid termination provider that will handle 100% of our outbound call volume (a mix of voice and fax); we can fall-back to FlowRoute as a backup solution if the primary provider goes down. Thanks a million, -- Nathan Anderson First Step Internet, LLC nathana at fsr.com
Slightly off topic but from spec sheet the new transcoding NUIs in the low-end ACME SBCs (3820/4500?) in theory can handle T.38 to T.30(ulaw/alaw) interop, so you might be able to 'wrangle' it yourself. -- Peter Childs - Voice Engineer Internode/Agile Ph: 08 8228 2380 Mb: 0406 388 405 Fax: 08 8235 6801 On 13/12/2011, at 12:26 PM, Nathan Anderson wrote: Hello, New to the list. I work for a regional broadband ISP who is looking to also become an ITSP. We are looking for a good SIP termination provider with reasonable rates to all of North America that also happens to guarantee T.38 gateway support for 100% of calls. Currently, we are using FlowRoute. We are happy with the service, but the odds of us hitting a gateway (through one of their upstreams) that will accept our T.38 re-INVITE are about 50/50...not very good. We tried Gafachi, but that was not a good experience. Their rate table is all kinds of screwed-up. The only other one I've been able to find in my searches is Alcazar Networks. Anybody have any first-hand experience with them who can vouch for them as well as their T.38 support for the wholesale termination product? Other recommendations are also welcome, as well. Although we may someday go down the road of loading an LCR table into our SBC, at this point we are looking for a single solid termination provider that will handle 100% of our outbound call volume (a mix of voice and fax); we can fall-back to FlowRoute as a backup solution if the primary provider goes down. Thanks a million, -- Nathan Anderson First Step Internet, LLC nathana at fsr.com<mailto:nathana at fsr.com> _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
So, do T.38 only last-mile to the ATA, then dump it back into the audible domain at our own SBC and pass it to our termination provider as a G.711u call? Interesting idea...I'll chew on that for a bit. Thanks. -- Nathan ________________________________ From: Peter Childs [mailto:PChilds at internode.com.au] Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 6:59 PM To: Nathan Anderson Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider? Slightly off topic but from spec sheet the new transcoding NUIs in the low-end ACME SBCs (3820/4500?) in theory can handle T.38 to T.30(ulaw/alaw) interop, so you might be able to 'wrangle' it yourself. -- Peter Childs - Voice Engineer Internode/Agile Ph: 08 8228 2380 Mb: 0406 388 405 Fax: 08 8235 6801 On 13/12/2011, at 12:26 PM, Nathan Anderson wrote: Hello, New to the list. I work for a regional broadband ISP who is looking to also become an ITSP. We are looking for a good SIP termination provider with reasonable rates to all of North America that also happens to guarantee T.38 gateway support for 100% of calls. Currently, we are using FlowRoute. We are happy with the service, but the odds of us hitting a gateway (through one of their upstreams) that will accept our T.38 re-INVITE are about 50/50...not very good. We tried Gafachi, but that was not a good experience. Their rate table is all kinds of screwed-up. The only other one I've been able to find in my searches is Alcazar Networks. Anybody have any first-hand experience with them who can vouch for them as well as their T.38 support for the wholesale termination product? Other recommendations are also welcome, as well. Although we may someday go down the road of loading an LCR table into our SBC, at this point we are looking for a single solid termination provider that will handle 100% of our outbound call volume (a mix of voice and fax); we can fall-back to FlowRoute as a backup solution if the primary provider goes down. Thanks a million, -- Nathan Anderson First Step Internet, LLC nathana at fsr.com<mailto:nathana at fsr.com> _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
We terminate our T38 in-house and send t30/711 to our upstream carriers. It works pretty well, but it's not a panacea. In general, we find that T38 fixes some problems, moves some problems from the far end to the fax/ata interface, and invents entirely new ones. ++ on Alex's long fax experience. David On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 8:53 PM, Nathan Anderson <nathana at fsr.com> wrote:
So, do T.38 only last-mile to the ATA, then dump it back into the audible domain at our own SBC and pass it to our termination provider as a G.711u call?? Interesting idea...I'll chew on that for a bit.? Thanks.
-- Nathan
________________________________ From: Peter Childs [mailto:PChilds at internode.com.au] Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 6:59 PM To: Nathan Anderson Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org
Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?
Slightly off topic but from spec sheet the new transcoding NUIs in the low-end ACME SBCs (3820/4500?) in theory can handle T.38 to T.30(ulaw/alaw) interop, so you might be able to 'wrangle' it yourself.
-- ?Peter Childs - Voice Engineer ?Internode/Agile ?Ph: 08 8228 2380 Mb: 0406 388 405 Fax: 08 8235 6801
On 13/12/2011, at 12:26 PM, Nathan Anderson wrote:
Hello,
New to the list. ?I work for a regional broadband ISP who is looking to also become an ITSP.
We are looking for a good SIP termination provider with reasonable rates to all of North America that also happens to guarantee T.38 gateway support for 100% of calls.
Currently, we are using FlowRoute. ?We are happy with the service, but the odds of us hitting a gateway (through one of their upstreams) that will accept our T.38 re-INVITE are about 50/50...not very good.
We tried Gafachi, but that was not a good experience. ?Their rate table is all kinds of screwed-up.
The only other one I've been able to find in my searches is Alcazar Networks. ?Anybody have any first-hand experience with them who can vouch for them as well as their T.38 support for the wholesale termination product?
Other recommendations are also welcome, as well. ?Although we may someday go down the road of loading an LCR table into our SBC, at this point we are looking for a single solid termination provider that will handle 100% of our outbound call volume (a mix of voice and fax); we can fall-back to FlowRoute as a backup solution if the primary provider goes down.
Thanks a million,
-- Nathan Anderson First Step Internet, LLC nathana at fsr.com _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
We run mostly the same way, t.38 from IAD to our core and terminate fax calls through PRI gateways - our experience is mostly the same, works well most of the time but occasionally we run into a fax that just doesn't interop with the IAD, etc. We also find that we have to "play" with the settings on most fax machines to get them working anywhere near reliably. We also have a number of clients that want to use their fax line to refill postage meters (apparently they use fax modems) and this invariably fails with t.38. I agree that fax is long due to retire but the requirement for support is almost universal. I looked at the fax/HTTPS solutions from FaxBack and FaxCore that use a special AudioCodes IAD/ATA. Both are OK products but I felt like the price is just too high. I actually rigged up an open source proof of concept for a similar store and forward configuration in our lab using a minimal Asterisk implementation and FXS port for the "IAD" and a server running Asterisk with a PHP gateway I wrote running on Apache. Basically the dialplan on the "IAD" sends every call to a local fax context and receives the fax locally as a TIFF, encoding the from, to, and date/time in the filename. It then does an HTTPS PUT with curl to send the file to the Asterisk fax gateway where it is queued and transmitted to the final destination. This works really well, there are some issues though - the sending fax machine always sees a successful transmission regardless of whether the final transmission takes place or not. This necessitates a means of doing out of band error reporting - i.e. you would disable transmission reports on the fax and then have the IAD query for the status of the sent faxes and transmit a fax locally reporting a failure/success. If anyone is interested in the work I have completed so far I would be happy to share it, would love to develop it further, put a GUI on it for fax archival/retrieval, etc. and actually come up with a reliable solution. Robert Dawson
-----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops- bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of David Hiers Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 1:32 AM To: Nathan Anderson Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?
We terminate our T38 in-house and send t30/711 to our upstream carriers. It works pretty well, but it's not a panacea.
In general, we find that T38 fixes some problems, moves some problems from the far end to the fax/ata interface, and invents entirely new ones.
++ on Alex's long fax experience.
David
On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 8:53 PM, Nathan Anderson <nathana at fsr.com> wrote:
So, do T.38 only last-mile to the ATA, then dump it back into the audible domain at our own SBC and pass it to our termination provider as a G.711u call?? Interesting idea...I'll chew on that for a bit.? Thanks.
-- Nathan
________________________________ From: Peter Childs [mailto:PChilds at internode.com.au] Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 6:59 PM To: Nathan Anderson Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org
Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?
Slightly off topic but from spec sheet the new transcoding NUIs in the low-end ACME SBCs (3820/4500?) in theory can handle T.38 to T.30(ulaw/alaw) interop, so you might be able to 'wrangle' it yourself.
-- ?Peter Childs - Voice Engineer ?Internode/Agile ?Ph: 08 8228 2380 Mb: 0406 388 405 Fax: 08 8235 6801
On 13/12/2011, at 12:26 PM, Nathan Anderson wrote:
Hello,
New to the list. ?I work for a regional broadband ISP who is looking to also become an ITSP.
We are looking for a good SIP termination provider with reasonable rates to all of North America that also happens to guarantee T.38 gateway support for 100% of calls.
Currently, we are using FlowRoute. ?We are happy with the service, but the odds of us hitting a gateway (through one of their upstreams) that will accept our T.38 re-INVITE are about 50/50...not very good.
We tried Gafachi, but that was not a good experience. ?Their rate table is all kinds of screwed-up.
The only other one I've been able to find in my searches is Alcazar Networks. ?Anybody have any first-hand experience with them who can vouch for them as well as their T.38 support for the wholesale termination product?
Other recommendations are also welcome, as well. ?Although we may someday go down the road of loading an LCR table into our SBC, at this point we are looking for a single solid termination provider that will handle 100% of our outbound call volume (a mix of voice and fax); we can fall-back to FlowRoute as a backup solution if the primary provider goes down.
Thanks a million,
-- Nathan Anderson First Step Internet, LLC nathana at fsr.com _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
" I agree that fax is long due to retire but the requirement for support is almost universal." Tru dat. When they remove the fax number from whitehouse.gov and quit faxing CALEA subpoenas, we can quit worrying about faxing. David Hiers CCIE (R/S, V), CISSP ADP Dealer Services 2525 SW 1st Ave. Suite 300W Portland, OR 97201 o: 503-205-4467 f: 503-402-3277 ###Please note my email address is changing: ###from David_Hiers at adp.com ### to David.Hiers at adp.com -----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Robert Dawson Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 6:47 AM Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider? We run mostly the same way, t.38 from IAD to our core and terminate fax calls through PRI gateways - our experience is mostly the same, works well most of the time but occasionally we run into a fax that just doesn't interop with the IAD, etc. We also find that we have to "play" with the settings on most fax machines to get them working anywhere near reliably. We also have a number of clients that want to use their fax line to refill postage meters (apparently they use fax modems) and this invariably fails with t.38. I agree that fax is long due to retire but the requirement for support is almost universal. I looked at the fax/HTTPS solutions from FaxBack and FaxCore that use a special AudioCodes IAD/ATA. Both are OK products but I felt like the price is just too high. I actually rigged up an open source proof of concept for a similar store and forward configuration in our lab using a minimal Asterisk implementation and FXS port for the "IAD" and a server running Asterisk with a PHP gateway I wrote running on Apache. Basically the dialplan on the "IAD" sends every call to a local fax context and receives the fax locally as a TIFF, encoding the from, to, and date/time in the filename. It then does an HTTPS PUT with curl to send the file to the Asterisk fax gateway where it is queued and transmitted to the final destination. This works really well, there are some issues though - the sending fax machine always sees a successful transmission regardless of whether the final transmission takes place or not. This necessitates a means of doing out of band error reporting - i.e. you would disable transmission reports on the fax and then have the IAD query for the status of the sent faxes and transmit a fax locally reporting a failure/success. If anyone is interested in the work I have completed so far I would be happy to share it, would love to develop it further, put a GUI on it for fax archival/retrieval, etc. and actually come up with a reliable solution. Robert Dawson
-----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops- bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of David Hiers Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 1:32 AM To: Nathan Anderson Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?
We terminate our T38 in-house and send t30/711 to our upstream carriers. It works pretty well, but it's not a panacea.
In general, we find that T38 fixes some problems, moves some problems from the far end to the fax/ata interface, and invents entirely new ones.
++ on Alex's long fax experience.
David
On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 8:53 PM, Nathan Anderson <nathana at fsr.com> wrote:
So, do T.38 only last-mile to the ATA, then dump it back into the audible domain at our own SBC and pass it to our termination provider as a G.711u call?? Interesting idea...I'll chew on that for a bit.? Thanks.
-- Nathan
________________________________ From: Peter Childs [mailto:PChilds at internode.com.au] Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 6:59 PM To: Nathan Anderson Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org
Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?
Slightly off topic but from spec sheet the new transcoding NUIs in the low-end ACME SBCs (3820/4500?) in theory can handle T.38 to T.30(ulaw/alaw) interop, so you might be able to 'wrangle' it yourself.
-- ?Peter Childs - Voice Engineer ?Internode/Agile ?Ph: 08 8228 2380 Mb: 0406 388 405 Fax: 08 8235 6801
On 13/12/2011, at 12:26 PM, Nathan Anderson wrote:
Hello,
New to the list. ?I work for a regional broadband ISP who is looking to also become an ITSP.
We are looking for a good SIP termination provider with reasonable rates to all of North America that also happens to guarantee T.38 gateway support for 100% of calls.
Currently, we are using FlowRoute. ?We are happy with the service, but the odds of us hitting a gateway (through one of their upstreams) that will accept our T.38 re-INVITE are about 50/50...not very good.
We tried Gafachi, but that was not a good experience. ?Their rate table is all kinds of screwed-up.
The only other one I've been able to find in my searches is Alcazar Networks. ?Anybody have any first-hand experience with them who can vouch for them as well as their T.38 support for the wholesale termination product?
Other recommendations are also welcome, as well. ?Although we may someday go down the road of loading an LCR table into our SBC, at this point we are looking for a single solid termination provider that will handle 100% of our outbound call volume (a mix of voice and fax); we can fall-back to FlowRoute as a backup solution if the primary provider goes down.
Thanks a million,
-- Nathan Anderson First Step Internet, LLC nathana at fsr.com _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
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On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 12:07 PM, Hiers, David <David_Hiers at adp.com> wrote:
" I agree that fax is long due to retire but the requirement for support is almost universal."
Tru dat. When they remove the fax number from whitehouse.gov and quit faxing CALEA subpoenas, we can quit worrying about faxing.
We don't get many legal notices, but they have all come via e-mail. None were federal, just state and local. And I know some (most?) people will say we are crazy, but we don't accept faxes from customers. If you're not smart enough to e-mail the contract back to us, you're not qualified to be our customer. You'll end up being a support burden. -- Carlos Alvarez TelEvolve 602-889-3003
We have encountered many of the problems expressed in this thread. We had no problem (close to 100% success rate) sending and receiving faxes using uLaw in and out of our server cluster; however, passing those calls to the customer ATA devices resulted in a large number of problems (25% success rate if we were lucky). No matter what we did, the latency and packet loss killed the handshake or dropped the fax part way through the transmission. After months of testing, we were able to blame the "last-mile" network connections. What we ended up doing was capturing all faxes in our cluster with a hylafax server and then passing it on to the recipient. In the case of inbound, the call comes in uLaw to our cluster, is passed to the hylafax server which queues the fax, and then forwards it to the end-user ATA via uLaw. Outbound works the same way but in the opposite direction. Call routing for the ATA forces all calls (we tell our customers that they are Fax only extensions) to hylafax iaxmodems, hylafax queues up the fax, and then forwards it out to the unknown. Yes, this took a bit of scripting and playing with dialplans; however, the result is amazing. We are now seeing a success rate close to 99% (from what we can tell, the only failures are the result of network congestion on the user end). As such, we have ignored T.38 all together as we experienced more problems on the ATA side than we cared to handle. We have found that our customers also love the email2fax & fax2email gateway we added when we implemented this service. Furthermore, they enjoy the fact that they can log into the web site and pull up copies of every fax they have sent or received. Needless to say, by fixing one problem, we have created an additional revenue stream in the process. Some food for thought... --- Brandon Lehmann ?CCNA, CCAI, CFOT, Net+, A+, Security+ BitRadius, LLC 510 Court Street Fremont, Ohio 43420 Email:?brandon at bitradius.com Web: http://www.bitradius.com Phone: 567-255-3610 x9500 Toll-Free: 888-608-7253 x9500 Fax: 567-255-3611 -----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of David Hiers Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 1:32 AM To: Nathan Anderson Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider? We terminate our T38 in-house and send t30/711 to our upstream carriers. It works pretty well, but it's not a panacea. In general, we find that T38 fixes some problems, moves some problems from the far end to the fax/ata interface, and invents entirely new ones. ++ on Alex's long fax experience. David On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 8:53 PM, Nathan Anderson <nathana at fsr.com> wrote:
So, do T.38 only last-mile to the ATA, then dump it back into the audible domain at our own SBC and pass it to our termination provider as a G.711u call?? Interesting idea...I'll chew on that for a bit.? Thanks.
-- Nathan
________________________________ From: Peter Childs [mailto:PChilds at internode.com.au] Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 6:59 PM To: Nathan Anderson Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org
Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?
Slightly off topic but from spec sheet the new transcoding NUIs in the low-end ACME SBCs (3820/4500?) in theory can handle T.38 to T.30(ulaw/alaw) interop, so you might be able to 'wrangle' it yourself.
-- ?Peter Childs - Voice Engineer ?Internode/Agile ?Ph: 08 8228 2380 Mb: 0406 388 405 Fax: 08 8235 6801
On 13/12/2011, at 12:26 PM, Nathan Anderson wrote:
Hello,
New to the list. ?I work for a regional broadband ISP who is looking to also become an ITSP.
We are looking for a good SIP termination provider with reasonable rates to all of North America that also happens to guarantee T.38 gateway support for 100% of calls.
Currently, we are using FlowRoute. ?We are happy with the service, but the odds of us hitting a gateway (through one of their upstreams) that will accept our T.38 re-INVITE are about 50/50...not very good.
We tried Gafachi, but that was not a good experience. ?Their rate table is all kinds of screwed-up.
The only other one I've been able to find in my searches is Alcazar Networks. ?Anybody have any first-hand experience with them who can vouch for them as well as their T.38 support for the wholesale termination product?
Other recommendations are also welcome, as well. ?Although we may someday go down the road of loading an LCR table into our SBC, at this point we are looking for a single solid termination provider that will handle 100% of our outbound call volume (a mix of voice and fax); we can fall-back to FlowRoute as a backup solution if the primary provider goes down.
Thanks a million,
-- Nathan Anderson First Step Internet, LLC nathana at fsr.com _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
What we ended up doing was capturing all faxes in our cluster with a hylafax server and then passing it on to the recipient.
So you are doing a store and forward on the hylafax and essentially splitting the legs of the call . . . interesting and it works with a standard ATA as well. Robert Dawson Voice Systems Engineer 202-349-0477(o) | 571-234-2621 (c) | 202-541-9050 (f) rdawson at alliedtelecom.net~ www.alliedtelecom.com 1120 20th St NW Suite 500-S Washington, DC 20036
-----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops- bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Brandon Lehmann Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 11:15 AM To: David Hiers; Nathan Anderson Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?
We have encountered many of the problems expressed in this thread. We had no problem (close to 100% success rate) sending and receiving faxes using uLaw in and out of our server cluster; however, passing those calls to the customer ATA devices resulted in a large number of problems (25% success rate if we were lucky). No matter what we did, the latency and packet loss killed the handshake or dropped the fax part way through the transmission. After months of testing, we were able to blame the "last-mile" network connections.
What we ended up doing was capturing all faxes in our cluster with a hylafax server and then passing it on to the recipient. In the case of inbound, the call comes in uLaw to our cluster, is passed to the hylafax server which queues the fax, and then forwards it to the end- user ATA via uLaw. Outbound works the same way but in the opposite direction. Call routing for the ATA forces all calls (we tell our customers that they are Fax only extensions) to hylafax iaxmodems, hylafax queues up the fax, and then forwards it out to the unknown. Yes, this took a bit of scripting and playing with dialplans; however, the result is amazing. We are now seeing a success rate close to 99% (from what we can tell, the only failures are the result of network congestion on the user end). As such, we have ignored T.38 all together as we experienced more problems on the ATA side than we cared to handle.
We have found that our customers also love the email2fax & fax2email gateway we added when we implemented this service. Furthermore, they enjoy the fact that they can log into the web site and pull up copies of every fax they have sent or received. Needless to say, by fixing one problem, we have created an additional revenue stream in the process.
Some food for thought...
---
Brandon Lehmann ?CCNA, CCAI, CFOT, Net+, A+, Security+ BitRadius, LLC 510 Court Street Fremont, Ohio 43420 Email:?brandon at bitradius.com Web: http://www.bitradius.com Phone: 567-255-3610 x9500 Toll-Free: 888-608-7253 x9500 Fax: 567-255-3611
-----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops- bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of David Hiers Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 1:32 AM To: Nathan Anderson Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?
We terminate our T38 in-house and send t30/711 to our upstream carriers. It works pretty well, but it's not a panacea.
In general, we find that T38 fixes some problems, moves some problems from the far end to the fax/ata interface, and invents entirely new ones.
++ on Alex's long fax experience.
David
On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 8:53 PM, Nathan Anderson <nathana at fsr.com> wrote:
So, do T.38 only last-mile to the ATA, then dump it back into the audible domain at our own SBC and pass it to our termination provider as a G.711u call?? Interesting idea...I'll chew on that for a bit.? Thanks.
-- Nathan
________________________________ From: Peter Childs [mailto:PChilds at internode.com.au] Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 6:59 PM To: Nathan Anderson Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org
Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?
Slightly off topic but from spec sheet the new transcoding NUIs in the low-end ACME SBCs (3820/4500?) in theory can handle T.38 to T.30(ulaw/alaw) interop, so you might be able to 'wrangle' it yourself.
-- ?Peter Childs - Voice Engineer ?Internode/Agile ?Ph: 08 8228 2380 Mb: 0406 388 405 Fax: 08 8235 6801
On 13/12/2011, at 12:26 PM, Nathan Anderson wrote:
Hello,
New to the list. ?I work for a regional broadband ISP who is looking to also become an ITSP.
We are looking for a good SIP termination provider with reasonable rates to all of North America that also happens to guarantee T.38 gateway support for 100% of calls.
Currently, we are using FlowRoute. ?We are happy with the service, but the odds of us hitting a gateway (through one of their upstreams) that will accept our T.38 re-INVITE are about 50/50...not very good.
We tried Gafachi, but that was not a good experience. ?Their rate table is all kinds of screwed-up.
The only other one I've been able to find in my searches is Alcazar Networks. ?Anybody have any first-hand experience with them who can vouch for them as well as their T.38 support for the wholesale termination product?
Other recommendations are also welcome, as well. ?Although we may someday go down the road of loading an LCR table into our SBC, at this point we are looking for a single solid termination provider that will handle 100% of our outbound call volume (a mix of voice and fax); we can fall-back to FlowRoute as a backup solution if the primary provider goes down.
Thanks a million,
-- Nathan Anderson First Step Internet, LLC nathana at fsr.com _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
Correct. We've also built the system to return a notification to the original sender (if heading outbound) if the fax was delayed, failed (doesn't happen often), or sent and they have the ability to receive those notifications via SMS, email, or fax. It works well with all of the ATAs we've tried it with. --- Brandon Lehmann CCNA, CCAI, CFOT, Net+, A+, Security+ BitRadius, LLC 510 Court St Fremont, Ohio 43420 Email: brandon at bitradius.com Web: http://www.bitradius.com Phone: 567-255-3610x9500 Toll-Free: 888-608-7253x9500 Fax: 567-255-3611 -----Original Message----- From: Robert Dawson [mailto:RDawson at alliedtelecom.net] Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2011 11:41 AM To: Brandon Lehmann; David Hiers; Nathan Anderson Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: RE: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?
What we ended up doing was capturing all faxes in our cluster with a hylafax server and then passing it on to the recipient.
So you are doing a store and forward on the hylafax and essentially splitting the legs of the call . . . interesting and it works with a standard ATA as well. Robert Dawson Voice Systems Engineer 202-349-0477(o) | 571-234-2621 (c) | 202-541-9050 (f) rdawson at alliedtelecom.net~ www.alliedtelecom.com 1120 20th St NW Suite 500-S Washington, DC 20036
-----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops- bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Brandon Lehmann Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 11:15 AM To: David Hiers; Nathan Anderson Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?
We have encountered many of the problems expressed in this thread. We had no problem (close to 100% success rate) sending and receiving faxes using uLaw in and out of our server cluster; however, passing those calls to the customer ATA devices resulted in a large number of problems (25% success rate if we were lucky). No matter what we did, the latency and packet loss killed the handshake or dropped the fax part way through the transmission. After months of testing, we were able to blame the "last-mile" network connections.
What we ended up doing was capturing all faxes in our cluster with a hylafax server and then passing it on to the recipient. In the case of inbound, the call comes in uLaw to our cluster, is passed to the hylafax server which queues the fax, and then forwards it to the end- user ATA via uLaw. Outbound works the same way but in the opposite direction. Call routing for the ATA forces all calls (we tell our customers that they are Fax only extensions) to hylafax iaxmodems, hylafax queues up the fax, and then forwards it out to the unknown. Yes, this took a bit of scripting and playing with dialplans; however, the result is amazing. We are now seeing a success rate close to 99% (from what we can tell, the only failures are the result of network congestion on the user end). As such, we have ignored T.38 all together as we experienced more problems on the ATA side than we cared to handle.
We have found that our customers also love the email2fax & fax2email gateway we added when we implemented this service. Furthermore, they enjoy the fact that they can log into the web site and pull up copies of every fax they have sent or received. Needless to say, by fixing one problem, we have created an additional revenue stream in the process.
Some food for thought...
---
Brandon Lehmann ?CCNA, CCAI, CFOT, Net+, A+, Security+ BitRadius, LLC 510 Court Street Fremont, Ohio 43420 Email:?brandon at bitradius.com Web: http://www.bitradius.com Phone: 567-255-3610 x9500 Toll-Free: 888-608-7253 x9500 Fax: 567-255-3611
-----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops- bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of David Hiers Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 1:32 AM To: Nathan Anderson Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?
We terminate our T38 in-house and send t30/711 to our upstream carriers. It works pretty well, but it's not a panacea.
In general, we find that T38 fixes some problems, moves some problems from the far end to the fax/ata interface, and invents entirely new ones.
++ on Alex's long fax experience.
David
On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 8:53 PM, Nathan Anderson <nathana at fsr.com> wrote:
So, do T.38 only last-mile to the ATA, then dump it back into the audible domain at our own SBC and pass it to our termination provider as a G.711u call?? Interesting idea...I'll chew on that for a bit.? Thanks.
-- Nathan
________________________________ From: Peter Childs [mailto:PChilds at internode.com.au] Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 6:59 PM To: Nathan Anderson Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org
Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?
Slightly off topic but from spec sheet the new transcoding NUIs in the low-end ACME SBCs (3820/4500?) in theory can handle T.38 to T.30(ulaw/alaw) interop, so you might be able to 'wrangle' it yourself.
-- ?Peter Childs - Voice Engineer ?Internode/Agile ?Ph: 08 8228 2380 Mb: 0406 388 405 Fax: 08 8235 6801
On 13/12/2011, at 12:26 PM, Nathan Anderson wrote:
Hello,
New to the list. ?I work for a regional broadband ISP who is looking to also become an ITSP.
We are looking for a good SIP termination provider with reasonable rates to all of North America that also happens to guarantee T.38 gateway support for 100% of calls.
Currently, we are using FlowRoute. ?We are happy with the service, but the odds of us hitting a gateway (through one of their upstreams) that will accept our T.38 re-INVITE are about 50/50...not very good.
We tried Gafachi, but that was not a good experience. ?Their rate table is all kinds of screwed-up.
The only other one I've been able to find in my searches is Alcazar Networks. ?Anybody have any first-hand experience with them who can vouch for them as well as their T.38 support for the wholesale termination product?
Other recommendations are also welcome, as well. ?Although we may someday go down the road of loading an LCR table into our SBC, at this point we are looking for a single solid termination provider that will handle 100% of our outbound call volume (a mix of voice and fax); we can fall-back to FlowRoute as a backup solution if the primary provider goes down.
Thanks a million,
-- Nathan Anderson First Step Internet, LLC nathana at fsr.com _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
I know they often price themselves out, but we see T.38 support just about across the board on Level 3. I have no idea to what degree they guarantee it though. I wouldn't ever put a guarantee on fax if it were up to me. Then again, if it were up to me I'd retire the entire concept. -Scott -----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Nathan Anderson Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 8:56 PM To: 'voiceops at voiceops.org' Subject: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider? Hello, New to the list. I work for a regional broadband ISP who is looking to also become an ITSP. We are looking for a good SIP termination provider with reasonable rates to all of North America that also happens to guarantee T.38 gateway support for 100% of calls. Currently, we are using FlowRoute. We are happy with the service, but the odds of us hitting a gateway (through one of their upstreams) that will accept our T.38 re-INVITE are about 50/50...not very good. We tried Gafachi, but that was not a good experience. Their rate table is all kinds of screwed-up. The only other one I've been able to find in my searches is Alcazar Networks. Anybody have any first-hand experience with them who can vouch for them as well as their T.38 support for the wholesale termination product? Other recommendations are also welcome, as well. Although we may someday go down the road of loading an LCR table into our SBC, at this point we are looking for a single solid termination provider that will handle 100% of our outbound call volume (a mix of voice and fax); we can fall-back to FlowRoute as a backup solution if the primary provider goes down. Thanks a million, -- Nathan Anderson First Step Internet, LLC nathana at fsr.com _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
I believe L3 has T.38 across all the rate centers they offer service to. On a call-to-call and device-to-device basis we find that it mostly works fine and sometimes just doesn't, but it's no more problematic than any other fax solution I've ever seen other than using POTS lines, and considerably better than some.... --Jon Radel On 12/12/11 10:01 PM, Scott Berkman wrote:
I know they often price themselves out, but we see T.38 support just about across the board on Level 3. I have no idea to what degree they guarantee it though. I wouldn't ever put a guarantee on fax if it were up to me. Then again, if it were up to me I'd retire the entire concept.
-Scott
-----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Nathan Anderson Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 8:56 PM To: 'voiceops at voiceops.org' Subject: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider?
Hello,
New to the list. I work for a regional broadband ISP who is looking to also become an ITSP.
We are looking for a good SIP termination provider with reasonable rates to all of North America that also happens to guarantee T.38 gateway support for 100% of calls.
Currently, we are using FlowRoute. We are happy with the service, but the odds of us hitting a gateway (through one of their upstreams) that will accept our T.38 re-INVITE are about 50/50...not very good.
We tried Gafachi, but that was not a good experience. Their rate table is all kinds of screwed-up.
The only other one I've been able to find in my searches is Alcazar Networks. Anybody have any first-hand experience with them who can vouch for them as well as their T.38 support for the wholesale termination product?
Other recommendations are also welcome, as well. Although we may someday go down the road of loading an LCR table into our SBC, at this point we are looking for a single solid termination provider that will handle 100% of our outbound call volume (a mix of voice and fax); we can fall-back to FlowRoute as a backup solution if the primary provider goes down.
Thanks a million,
Fully-agreed; unfortunately, some customers demand fax support still. *sigh* Interesting that you bring up L3, though...surely things have changed in the past few years, but I used to have a Packet8 account at home, and once upon a time they were *exclusively* L3 (at least for origination/DIDs). When they rolled out their T.38-based fax service (second-line for $9.99 dedicated to faxing), they told me that it wasn't supported in all markets/rate-centers yet because L3 didn't do T.38 and they had to find another provider who did (I want to say it was Global Crossing), and that provider didn't have half the # of rate centers that L3 had. Anyway, I think Level3 is probably out of our league at the current point in time. Thanks, though. -- Nathan -----Original Message----- From: Scott Berkman [mailto:scott at sberkman.net] Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 7:01 PM To: Nathan Anderson; voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: RE: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider? I know they often price themselves out, but we see T.38 support just about across the board on Level 3. I have no idea to what degree they guarantee it though. I wouldn't ever put a guarantee on fax if it were up to me. Then again, if it were up to me I'd retire the entire concept. -Scott -----Original Message----- From: voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Nathan Anderson Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 8:56 PM To: 'voiceops at voiceops.org' Subject: [VoiceOps] T.38 termination provider? Hello, New to the list. I work for a regional broadband ISP who is looking to also become an ITSP. We are looking for a good SIP termination provider with reasonable rates to all of North America that also happens to guarantee T.38 gateway support for 100% of calls. Currently, we are using FlowRoute. We are happy with the service, but the odds of us hitting a gateway (through one of their upstreams) that will accept our T.38 re-INVITE are about 50/50...not very good. We tried Gafachi, but that was not a good experience. Their rate table is all kinds of screwed-up. The only other one I've been able to find in my searches is Alcazar Networks. Anybody have any first-hand experience with them who can vouch for them as well as their T.38 support for the wholesale termination product? Other recommendations are also welcome, as well. Although we may someday go down the road of loading an LCR table into our SBC, at this point we are looking for a single solid termination provider that will handle 100% of our outbound call volume (a mix of voice and fax); we can fall-back to FlowRoute as a backup solution if the primary provider goes down. Thanks a million, -- Nathan Anderson First Step Internet, LLC nathana at fsr.com _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
Just to update everyone on this who piped in, and to be fair to FlowRoute... A member of FlowRoute support contacted me off-list and told me that they have made some changes to their routes and list of upstream carriers since I contacted them about this back in August (and received the very non-committal "it may work, it may not...no guarantees" response), and they have apparently changed their stance and now claim unilateral T.38 support on all calls being terminated by them as of a few weeks ago, including to some international destinations (haven't tested this, so can't speak to this; just echoing what I was told). He said if I'm still having problems I should open a ticket again. So I ran the same tests I did before, and got the same results as before (actually, worse: I was 1 for 7 in my tests this evening). Opened a ticket with the details (packet capture showed their end rejecting my T.38 re-INVITE), was told they tracked the problem down for that particular destination, opened a ticket with the upstream provider in question, fixed it in the meantime by re-routing around it, and asked me to try again. I did so, and it is working 100% of the time now. And all of this happened this evening, well after normal working/office-hours. Needless to say, I'm floored at the amazing level of responsiveness (and results) that I got from them on this today. All this to say that I'm going to give FlowRoute another chance (they've certainly earned it), although I appreciate some of the suggestions and offers I got both on- and off-list, as well as some of the other educational discussion surrounding T.38 and Fax-over-IP in general that this sparked. Thanks, all, -- Nathan Anderson First Step Internet, LLC nathana at fsr.com -----Original Message----- From: Nathan Anderson Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 5:56 PM To: 'voiceops at voiceops.org' Subject: T.38 termination provider? Hello, New to the list. I work for a regional broadband ISP who is looking to also become an ITSP. We are looking for a good SIP termination provider with reasonable rates to all of North America that also happens to guarantee T.38 gateway support for 100% of calls. Currently, we are using FlowRoute. We are happy with the service, but the odds of us hitting a gateway (through one of their upstreams) that will accept our T.38 re-INVITE are about 50/50...not very good. We tried Gafachi, but that was not a good experience. Their rate table is all kinds of screwed-up. The only other one I've been able to find in my searches is Alcazar Networks. Anybody have any first-hand experience with them who can vouch for them as well as their T.38 support for the wholesale termination product? Other recommendations are also welcome, as well. Although we may someday go down the road of loading an LCR table into our SBC, at this point we are looking for a single solid termination provider that will handle 100% of our outbound call volume (a mix of voice and fax); we can fall-back to FlowRoute as a backup solution if the primary provider goes down. Thanks a million, -- Nathan Anderson First Step Internet, LLC nathana at fsr.com
participants (9)
-
brandon＠bitradius.com -
carlos＠televolve.com -
David_Hiers＠adp.com -
hiersd＠gmail.com -
jradel＠vantage.com -
nathana＠fsr.com -
PChilds＠internode.com.au -
RDawson＠alliedtelecom.net -
scott＠sberkman.net