Re: [hylafax-users] Hylafax + WAN

[Lee Howard <faxguy@deanox.com>]

On 2002.04.01 09:32 John Cuzzola wrote:
> 
> Hi Everyone,
>  I'm new to the list and (relatively) new to HylaFax. My employer is a
> school district who wants to cut back on their Fax costs spread across a
> dozen or so locations. The thought was to have one central location where
> all the faxes could be received and distributed to the proper location
> via
> our WAN (email). Has anyone implemented this? My thought was to get one
> phone line and ask the telco for 12 different phone numbers for that
> line.

Generally, then, all you've done with the telco is to purchase a bunch of 
numbers which are assigned to the same line.  What you want is to have the 
telco actually pass the "called number" to the modem as data - similar to 
the way Caller-ID information is delivered.  This is commonly referred to 
as "DID", but maybe NDIS and NDID are other acronyms for the same thing.  
I'm not sure if this is only available on ISDN lines or not, but I suspect 
that ISDN will still be less-expensive than 12 phone lines.  And one ISDN 
modem will probably be less expensive than 12 USB modems or a multi-port 
modem.

> Unfortunately I don't think this will work as I've been trying a
> few
> test faxes and AFAIK there is no variable in the logs that identifies
> which number was dialed so I can send the file off to the appropriate
> email account. I can't use the ID of the sender as the fax could come
> from
> anywhere.

That's probably because you didn't get DID.

However... there's a whole sequence of things that have to work together 
here.  The telco has to send the DID info.  The modem has to understand 
and report it.  You have to then configure HylaFAX to "hear" it from the 
modem.  You have to implement its usage in etc/FaxDispatch (only available 
in 4.1.1).

> Has anyone had any experience with this?

There's at least a few that I know of doing ISDN DID with HylaFAX.

> Do I need individual
> phone lines + bank of modems? (In which case we're still paying for the
> same number of lines and haven't saved any costs only added another level
> of complexity).

Depends what you consider more complex: administrating HylaFAX and e-mail, 
or running around to twelve different schools in your district to replace 
paper, fix jams, etc.

Furthermore, you'll probably want to factor in the probability that the 
schools are going to want to fax out.  So, removing the fax machine 
attached to a phone line at each school entirely is usually not possible 
unless you put scanners and some piece of client software there instead 
and train them on the usage.

Lee.

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