Fax Over Satellite

Posts: 18 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Aug 10, 2005 Posts: 18

I have been working on this for quite some time. A few of our remote sites are using a satellite for data and VoIP. All the sites have the Linksys RT31P2 routers. At most I am able to get about 10% success rate. The sites don't want to fax using a service on their computers. I am stuck at the moment what to do. I have tried *99, lowering the baud, turning off ECM, and so on. I have been on the phone with support for many hours. By the way when I had initially tested in the office, over the satellite, I was getting about a 99% success rate.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I don't know what to do or what next step I should take. Anyone else able to fax over a satellite connection with Vonage? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Posts: 1123 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 1123

What kind of fax machine is it?

If you tested it and it was alright, and now it doesn't work, is it possible some enterprising person may have screwed around with the settings and they don't want to tell you they did?

Posts: 7 · Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 10:26 am Post subject: What type of satellite??

What type of satellite are you running over? I've been working with military satellites for 14 years and fax lines have always been a problem. Echo cancelling works great for voice, but many times the delay is too much for faxes. My suggestion, by $100 multi-function printer/scanners and send as adobe files. That's what we did. Satellites terminals also tend to run using as little transmit power as possible to extend the life of the satellite.

If you can, check the satellite modem for Bit Error Rate and recieve signal level. Smaller dish sizes also don't help much, I try to avoid using less than an 8 foot over a commercial satellite and 20 foot over a military one to get good service.

Posts: 18 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Aug 10, 2005 Posts: 18

Thank you for the reply. The main issue with these sites is that they are mobile. Anything larger than a 1.8M antenna would be too much. We recently installed a 1.8M antenna at one of the locations to test out the fax. We got the same results as the other locations. Rarely would a fax go through, although receiving them was a little more successful. We had a perfect signal, the BER for the receive end was a flat 0 and for the transmit end it was .00002. We could not get it any better.

I am not sure as to what to do next. There are other companys that claim they can send a fax over a satellite. I am reluctant to believe them.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 21, 2008 Posts: 3

Hi, I have been working with satellite for 8 years now and I can assure you that the only "fax over satellite" solution that really works 100% of the time is a thing called SatFax. Look them up at www.satfax.net. We use these guys for alll of our oilfeild and remote camp guys and they work every time. It's so nice to finally not get beat up by customers cause their fax over sat won't work.

cgallo wrote:

I have been working on this for quite some time. A few of our remote sites are using a satellite for data and VoIP. All the sites have the Linksys RT31P2 routers. At most I am able to get about 10% success rate. The sites don't want to fax using a service on their computers. I am stuck at the moment what to do. I have tried *99, lowering the baud, turning off ECM, and so on. I have been on the phone with support for many hours. By the way when I had initially tested in the office, over the satellite, I was getting about a 99% success rate.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I don't know what to do or what next step I should take. Anyone else able to fax over a satellite connection with Vonage? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Posts: 47 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jun 13, 2007 Posts: 47

sturgeon wrote:

Hi, I have been working with satellite for 8 years now and I can assure you that the only "fax over satellite" solution that really works 100% of the time is a thing called SatFax. Look them up at www.satfax.net. We use these guys for alll of our oilfeild and remote camp guys and they work every time. It's so nice to finally not get beat up by customers cause their fax over sat won't work.

I got the impression from your post that satfax was some kind of smart fax machine. But looks like it's another voip service provider !!
VOIP Phone lines: $59.99/month
Fax Lines: $99.99/month
VPN (LOH Encryption): $19.99/month
Voice mail Plus*: $14.99/month

Based on your experience that it works every time, I guess we can conclude that there is nothing wrong with fax machines or models, and they can be made to work reliably over IP.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 21, 2008 Posts: 3

Hi, Sturgeon here about that SatFax device. Yes they offer VoIP as well and VPN etc.....but their fax device works. I don't really care if they sell lollipops as long as I can get my customers reliable fax! We don't have to buy the VoIP to get the fax service.

We have used this device over satellite and over EVDO and it works very well over both. We don't even ask the customer what fax they are using and if we supply the fax we use the cheapest HP fax at Office Depot.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 01, 2008 Posts: 2

sturgeon wrote:

Hi, I have been working with satellite for 8 years now and I can assure you that the only "fax over satellite" solution that really works 100% of the time is a thing called SatFax. Look them up at www.satfax.net. We use these guys for alll of our oilfeild and remote camp guys and they work every time. It's so nice to finally not get beat up by customers cause their fax over sat won't work.

cgallo wrote:

I have been working on this for quite some time. A few of our remote sites are using a satellite for data and VoIP. All the sites have the Linksys RT31P2 routers. At most I am able to get about 10% success rate. The sites don't want to fax using a service on their computers. I am stuck at the moment what to do. I have tried *99, lowering the baud, turning off ECM, and so on. I have been on the phone with support for many hours. By the way when I had initially tested in the office, over the satellite, I was getting about a 99% success rate.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I don't know what to do or what next step I should take. Anyone else able to fax over a satellite connection with Vonage? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Actually, our FaxxBochs product was specifically designed to fax over satellite connections as well. We looked into the alternatives, including SatFax and TDMoIP, but decided to go ahead and roll our own. Our solution comes complete with a web-based interface for full fax management as well.

Just wanted to let everyone know of an alternative out there.

Chad

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 21, 2008 Posts: 3

Hi, I searched for the FaxxBochs and nothing comes up. Where can I get more info. I'm willing to try anything that will help my customers...

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 01, 2008 Posts: 2

sturgeon wrote:

Hi, I searched for the FaxxBochs and nothing comes up. Where can I get more info. I'm willing to try anything that will help my customers...

We JUST rolled it out on our website, which is www.rockbochs.com

Thanks for your interest.

Chad