FW: flexfax: Will 4.1b3 or 4.1 solve "no response to MPS"?

[Kenneth Cornetet <kcornet@kimball.com>]

Title: FW: flexfax: Will 4.1b3 or 4.1 solve "no response to MPS"?

If this is the same problem I see periodically, what happens is this:

Hylafax sends the "End of page, no more pages" command to the remote fax machine, then waits for the remote fax machine to acknowledge and say goodbye. Instead, the remote fax machine simply hangs up (I guess trying to save a few pennies on connect time). All fax machines and PC based faxing programs I've tried (not many...) seem to consider the fax successfully sent if they get to that point. Hylafax doesn't - resulting in 3 (by default) copies of the fax being sent to the destination and a failure email back to the sender.

Now some might argue that since this violates the fax spec, Hylafax should not be modified to accommodate this stupidity on the part of a few fax machine manufacturers. My $.02 would be that since I implemented Hylafax to cut down on the number of day-today problems I must examine and fix, I'd like a switch added to Hylafax to accommodate this. It certainly doesn't have to be on by default, but I'd like to have the option. After all, it isn't the brain-dead fax machine manufacturer that feels the pain from this, it's the Hylafax users and administrators. I have on a couple of occasions sent fax logs to our suppliers (who we send faxes to) trying to explain that they are getting 3 copies of each fax because their fax machine is "broken". Their answer is that they get faxes from hundreds of other customers with no problems, so it is *obviously* my software that's broken - not their machine.

-----Original Message-----
From: Giulio Orsero [mailto:giulioo@tiscalinet.it]
Sent: Monday, October 25, 1999 4:39 PM
To: flexfax@sgi.com
Cc: david@djwhome.demon.co.uk
Subject: Re: flexfax: Will 4.1b3 or 4.1 solve "no response to MPS"?

On Mon, 25 Oct 1999 08:19:43 +0100 (BST), hai scritto:

>> If this problem cannot be eliminated, I'd like a config option in
>> hylafax, turned off by default, which would be something like
>> "go on, even if you don't get a MPS response" (hylafax would send the
>
>You don't know when to start sending unless you get that response!
I meant that when hylafax starts asking for an MPS response it should go
straight on instead. So the "when" is when hylafax is waiting for the
MPS.

>One other thing to consider is which fax class are you using; reportedly
>most Windows fax software uses class 1, which is less exposed to modem
>related problems although more exposed to timing ones.
I use class1 xonxoff.

>If it is a broken remote machine problem, you may still have to analyse
>the logs - the difference may be that you can add a line in the info file
>for that destination to weaken the protocol compliance.
Is this possible now? Can I weaken protocol compliance?

Since I can regularly reproduce the problem, could I do something about
this? Some logging to send to someone who can understand it?

--
giulioo@tiscalinet.it