Linksys router fax problems

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 23, 2005 Posts: 4

I've been using Vonage at home for two months now and have no problems at all with the voice service but have struggled with the fax service. It doesn't matter if I use my HP all-in-one or my laptop with a built-in fax modem; the results are still the same. I notice that my success rate is highly dependent on two things: my baud rate and the quality of circuit for the remote fax. I've slowed down the speed of my fax modem and the HP4100 to 9600 bps and have improved reliability considerably (but not eliminated the problem completely).

Here's my issue with Vonage and Linksys: the problem is obviously caused by quantizing errors produced when a digital signal (fax) is converted to analog (phone) and then converted back to digital (IP). The proof is evident by the improvement caused by slowing down the transmission rate. It is quite clear that the Vonage fax service will never reliably work with the linksys router because it treats fax calls the same as voice calls. I belive that the router will need to have a fax modem integrated into it for the fax line which will receive the local fax, buffer it as a digital file, then send it to the remote fax via the IP network. Vonage and Linksys have known about this problem for at least 6 months and have offered no real solutions.

I am looking to open my new business office and was seriously considering Vonage but will have to shelf that plan until I can see that Vonage is serious about solving their fax problem. Before I ordered my service I read the Vonage website and they advertised full fax service with no caveats. I really don't care what Vonage does because there are other fish in the sea and I'll just use traditional POTS or another competitor. Perhaps this post will help others to carefully consider their decision until Vonage solves this basic technical problem.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 11:20 am Post subject:

this has been beat to death. have you seen these threads or tried any of these solutions:
http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic904.html
http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic1969.html
you're right about the baud rate. g.711 only supports ~90kbps max, so 9600 has worked for many. what is needed is T.38 support.
anyway, there's a million other posts, try searching, you're not alone or new.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 23, 2005 Posts: 4

Perhaps this topic needs to be beat to death because Vonage is asking everyone to slow down their faxes which speeds up their revenue, especially to overseas calls.

What about the unlucky customers who don't read the threads and only call Vonage customer service and get told to slow down their modem? Why didn't somebody at Vonage tell me to dial *99 which only masks the problem anyways.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 23, 2005 Posts: 4

Tried it, didn't work. The thread needs more development.