Faxing Issues -> My Solution

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 28, 2009 Posts: 7

So I was attempting to set-up an HP OfficeJet 6310 with Vonage to do outbound and inbound faxing, and could not get it to work. The machine would just not get a dial tone with the Vonage adapter. I tried everything:
- testing the machine with a landline -> it worked fine
- testing another fax machine with the Vonage adapter -> it worked fine
- testing the phone cord with a regular phone on Vonage line 2 -> it worked fine
- changing settings on machine (such as turning ECM off, moving speed to 9600, etc.) -> didn't help

Finally, I tried using the phone cord that Vonage supplied to connect the fax machine to the Vonage adapter and...Voila...it worked...go figure! I then used the phone cord I had previously been using (it is a 1-line phone cord) to connect the phone to the Vonage adapter and it worked fine too. I even put all the settings back (33600 speed, ECM on, etc.) and it still worked for both outbound and inbound. I have no idea why this phone cord works and the other didn't (especially when the other works fine for voice), but my suggestion is, if you are having problems where there is no dial tone, try a different phone cord (such as the one Vonage shipped with the adapter).

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 29, 2011 Posts: 3

In my moments of contemplating hari-kiri, I had a moment of brilliance...

I didn't have a phone cable with only 2 wires that was long enough. I did have some short ones and a whole bunch of DSL filters (that only used to 2 center wires) that I wasn't using (I would expect that a female to female coupler with only 2 wires would work as well) and I connected the long 50ft 4 wire phone cord to the filter and the short 2 wire to the fax and VOILA...I have dialtone on both ports and the fax works!

So basically Fax---short 2 wire cord---dsl filter---long cable connected to phone jack on filter---vonage adapter.