Re: [hylafax-users] Hylafax + WAN

[John Cuzzola <vdrifter@enterprise.sd73.bc.ca>]

*** Well thanks everyone for the very quick response. Right now I'm in the
very early stages of researching this to see how feasible it would be (by
early I mean about 2 hours old). So this is what I've gotten so far. DID
is the ticket. I'll need an ISDN line or PRI. Currently we do have a 23
line PRI connected to our Lucent PortMaster 4 for incoming dial-up (We
allow our teachers to dial into our LAN for internet access). So would it
be possible then for our telco to use the current PRI for these fax lines
(at a cost of possibly loosing some dial-up lines)? Would the PRI be split
into segments? One segment for the portmaster the other for the Diva card
(or whatever) directly into the fax server? The creation of the
etc/FaxDispatch script wouldn't be to much of a problem assuming the
latest version of HylaFax can pass the target phone number to the
script. Does this sound about right? Thanks again for the comments & Happy
Easter :)

  _____________________________________________________
 | John Cuzzola               |                        |
 |  jcuzzola@sd73.bc.ca       | 1383-9th Avenue        |
 |  System Analyst/Programmer | Kamloops, BC  V2C 3X7  |
 |  School District #73       | Phone:  (250) 374-0679 |
  -----------------------------------------------------
    ... In God we Trust, all others must show proper
                      identification ...

 




On Mon, 1 Apr 2002, Lee Howard wrote:

> 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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