Fax failure after fine for 3 weeks....

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

Read several other threads here, but none seem to be like this one...

I've had no problems sending/receiving faxes over my Linksys for three weeks (since I got service from V). Then, several days ago, no luck. Get 'TX function was not completed' from my Canon 780. The display shows 'calling... calling' even though I hear it answer. Sounds like a handshake issue....

Called V, they upgraded the firmware from 1.26 to 1.27, changed packet to 10 (what they called it; I've seen references to .10 here...), and recommended DSL filter from referring to that Michigan Telco page; also said try lower baud rate (9600).

All with no effect. (This is with the 2nd fax line, by the way.) So, what could cause this to fail after three weeks of perfect faxes?!

BTW, network is DSL -> ATA, no computer (I have DSL for backup to my cable, and use it only for V).

No troubles with voice, of course.

Got me stumped. Any ideas? Especially strange since it worked fine for three weeks...

Edit: After more research here, tried *99 and ECM off, no luck. Sheesh...

Edit2: Packetization at '10' means 10 milliseconds. If you use .10 for this, that's 100 msec. The correct answer is .010 (seconds). I'd rather use 10 (msec); it's clearer. Smile

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

Well, after calling back several times and suffering through CSRs who said 'we can't do anything more for you', I got to a supervisor who said that a tech would call me back when I was at home and able to test. (This was after being on hold for various folks for over an hour...)

This guy knew a lot, and was a delight to talk to after the frontend CSRs who are clueless. Turns out after a lot of PingPlotter testing and other things that the issue was the packet loss and round trip times on my Verizon DSL. It was running about 30% PL and over 200 msec RTT. (Compare to my Adelphia cable of under 10% and 80 msec RTT.) [The reason I didn't go that route myself originally was I *did* try it over the cable and faxes didn't work; could have been a slow day for cable that one time....]

I moved the Linksys to in front of my Netgear router on the cable side, and faxes now work fine.

1. Now I have to see why the DSL's so crappy.

2. It's also insane that I had to more or less tell them, no, it worked for weeks, you *have* to get me someone that can troubleshoot this at the level beyond "we changed the packetization, you changed the fax speed, that's it". I'm a telecom manager and a long-time network tech. How the heck can anyone expect Joe Blow to deal with this sort of thing if it takes this long for those that know a lot about networking to get things analyzed?

(And, good thing I'm able to have cable and DSL.... would be SOL else!)