problems sending faxes

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 14, 2004 Posts: 2

For the first two months, longer faxes were always difficult for me to send. It would usually drop after the first few pages. Now, I am completely unable to send without getting an error right when transmission starts. The recipient fax rings, picks up, and then fails. All the lights on my HP OfficeJet d135 start blinking and the screen tells me to "Turn Power Off and On". I have spent hours on the phone with customer support over at Vonage, Hewlett Packard, and Comcast. Nothing has worked. I have tried the following:

- packet sizes were changed on the Vonage end from 30 to 20 to 10 (minimum)
- baud rate changed to 9600 on my fax machine
- dialed with *99 prefix to ensure highest call quality
- turned error corrrection mode (ECM) on and off on my fax machine
- reset my fax machine to factory default settings
- power-cycled my fax machine
- used a dsl filter backwards between the Vonage modem (Motorola) and my fax machine
- plugged my fax machine directly into the wall instead of using a power strip
- checked quality of fax line by using it to place calls. sound was clear.
- tried connecting fax machine to main line (Line 1).
- ran a pling plotter test for 3 hours to test the quality of my internet connection. Vonage says there are latency and packet loss issue, but Comcast ensure quality connection after running some tests of their own.
- new updated firmware was downloaded to my modem from Vonage.

What I don't understand is that my fax line used to work with some limited success and Vonage says there have been no major changes/updates on their end since that time. Has anyone tried anything else that has worked or do I need to accept this fundamental disadvantage with Voip? By the way, the tech person I spoke with over at Vonage told me that some new coding should be released by the end of the year that would resolve most of the widespread faxing issues. Who knows if this will happen soon or happen at all!

Ron

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 14, 2004 Posts: 2

Voip is not made for fax transmission. Only about 15% of all Voip customers in the country are able to fax with some success. Vonage, your fax machine manufacturer, nor broadband provider can do anything to solve this. Other Voip companies tell you that fax is not possible right now. New protocols need to be implemented at the gateway and backbone level. This could take a long time. I feel I should let everyone be aware of this in order to save them time and frustration. If you are unable to send faxes, cancel your fax line, ask for a refund, and get an eFax number.

Posts: 220 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Aug 19, 2003 Posts: 220

I had a terrible time when I first put my HP G85 on the Cisco. Nothing worked. Vonage techs tweaked a few things and then it worked beautifully. Then we replaced the Cisco for the Moto for QOS and the beeping issue. Faxing when straight in the trash can. We did the DSL filter, the DSL filter backwards, the *99, the lowered baud -- you name it. I was so frustrated, I almost cancelled the fax and went 100% to using Efax. Then one day I was speaking to a tech about something totally unrelated. He went in and did SOMETHING and I cannot tell you what, and had me promptly fax him a 16-page document without incident. I'm not on a Linksys router, but I'm still faxing with only occasional errors, usually if it's a multipage document. I wish I could tell you precisely what this guy did, but it worked for me -- unless it was total coincidence.

Hang in there. I remember how frustrating that was.

Laurel

Posts: 220 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Aug 19, 2003 Posts: 220

oops. should proofread before I hit submit.

I shoudl say I am NOW on a linksys, not NOT on a linksys.

Posts: 46 · Full Forum Member Joined: Sep 06, 2004 Posts: 46

I had problems trying to FAX when I connected the modem directly to the Vonage adapter. Simply changing to a 2 conductor phone cable solved my problem.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 10, 2005 Posts: 1

Las_Vegas wrote:

I had problems trying to FAX when I connected the modem directly to the Vonage adapter. Simply changing to a 2 conductor phone cable solved my problem.

I didn't expect this to work at all - I can't believe that it did.

My fax modem was connected to the Vonage adapter with a two wire cable. I unplugged it at the adapter, put a four wire extension cable in, and plugged the old two wire cable into that - faxes now work perfectly. Smile

Posts: 30 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Feb 01, 2005 Posts: 30

I spent several hours with V troubleshooting the same thing. Did all about the same process, did all what the OP did as to packetisation, fax speed, DSL filter, etc. Turns out the DSL line I had V on had a lot of packet loss, and when I moved V to my Adelphia cable line, it worked fine.

Fax also originally was fine on DSL (Verizon) but failed after three weeks. No idea if the DSL deteriorated or what, since I use it for backup only.

BTW, the 4 wire/2 wire cable is a very long shot. I'm an Electrical Engineer and a Telecom manager. The center two wires are all that's used for a single line normal residential line/phone/fax. If that worked, I suspect your original cable was flaky.

If you get good results via PingPlotter and other tests over the connection where the V is, I don't have much to add, sorry!

Posts: 199 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Mar 26, 2005 Posts: 199

hmm... would like to get my problem worked out.

Seems I can send faxes via my PC modem and rec'v (did get an error though the first time). I did rec'v faxes on my Dell 1600n but I cannot send faxes at all. The wire coming in from the Linksys adapter is a 2 wire. The wire going out is a 4 wire. Which goes to a fax modem.

guess I'll try putting in a four wire between the Linksys adapter and my Dell 1600n. Like the guy before said...I can't imagine how this could work.

Posts: 19 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 24, 2005 Posts: 19

I've been able to send multi-page faxes with no problems.. BUT.. to do it I clamped the modem baud rate down to 2400.

It takes a while to send a 4 page fax at that rate... but it's 100%..

I just start sending the fax, walk away and come back in 5-6 minutes.

Works great... but slow..

Posts: 199 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Mar 26, 2005 Posts: 199

yea... I set the Dell 1600n to 9600 baud and all has been fine. May push the baud rate up to test it for faster speeds. Seems odd that only outbound faxing was impacted for me and making this adjustment corrected it.