Re: [hylafax-users] Business Fax Server:

[Rainer Hantsch <rainer@hantsch.co.at>]

Hello!

Three years ago, I built a Linux server for a customer (based on SuSE 5.3).
While it was only a file server at the beginning, they wanted to add a
mass-fax server later.
I do not know what number of FAXes you mean with "Mass Fax", so I will tell
you what I did for a really powerful FAX-Server. The above named server was a
Pentium 233 with 128MB RAM only, but it worked absolutely fine with EIGHT
analog CLASS 1 modems and blew out more than 6000 Faxes in one night... - And
it still does its job today without any change or problems!

What you must keep in mind is:
------------------------------
There is a little difference between sending some FAXes from a PC and real
MASS-FAXES. If you start with the wrong concept, you will never get satisfying
results with real mass-faxes!

a.) FAX-Sending is much more timing critical than a data communication,
    because it uses a partially synced protocol, where the timing must be
    kept stable for a longer while after an intermediate synchronisation. If
    your data stream is sometimes too slow, it can happen that the receiver
    gets missing lines - as you'll typically get with windoze based systems
    under higher loads (and I see enough such incoming FAXes every day).
    A faster machine will surely do this job better than a slower one, but
    this is the wrong way in my eyes, comparable with a car with activated
    breaks: Instead of simply releasing the breakes to drive faster, you
    could also use a stronger engine. But is this the solution? Surely NOT.

b.) Using standard serial ports will limit you to a few ports because you
    will not have enough IRQ's otherwise. Also, handling of dumb UARTs like
    a 16550 will cause a heavy CPU load which is not good for a smooth ope-
    ration.
    I decided therefore to use an intelligent serial card from EQUINOX with
    multiple serial ports and its own CPU. It needs NO IRQ and works with a
    big block of shared memory. (Theoretically this card is able to communi-
    cate with 255 kBps on all ports in parallel without causing recommendable
    CPU load, so you can estimate how low the CPU load is with 19200bps.)

c.) It is one part to _queue_ thousands of FAX jobs. Well, HylaFAX will do
    the rest GREATLY. But what happens if something goes wrong? It may happen,
    tht a number is wrong, or that the recipient has no paper in his FAX,...

    Normally, you will receive an error message by e-mail for every FAX,
    but in case of some thousand FAXes, even if only 10% fail, you'll get
    a lot of work on next day, as well as a very huge e-Mail list, so there
    must be done some automizing...
    I wrote therefore a small program (in FreePascal), which ...
    1. creates a job file
    2. queues all fax jobs inside this jobfile one by one, and uses hereby
       a special user name as sender (who gets the responses)

    Another program is working then as Mail-filter and is entered under
    this special name in the aliases file. All Mails to this address is
    piped into this filter and...
    1. parsed to find out if this FAX-Job was from the Mailing list or not.
    2. If so, the result message was checked. If it is an final error (that
       the job is cancelled upon an error) or it was finished positive,
       a specific flag is set in the file. Otherwise it is a temporary mes-
       sage, which is ignored.

    So I can use a simple program to view this job file any time and see the
    current status of this mass-fax. This program is run every 15 minutes
    and checks if all jobs are done, or not. If finished, it filters out
    all wrong gone jobs and creates ONE e-Mail which shows up the results.
    --> So everything works fully automized in the background!



| On Saturday 07 December 2002 08:05, you wrote:
| Any of you guys using hylafax on a box to make mass fax/broadcasts for
| businesses?  I'm thinking about starting up a small business and am
| probing you all for ideas?  Please advise...
|
| Joe

mfg

  Ing. Rainer Hantsch

.---------------------------------------------------------------------.
|      \\|//              Ing. Rainer HANTSCH  -  Hardware + Software |
|      (o o)              Forget Windoze! -- We focus on L-I-N-U-X... |
|--oOOo-(_)-oOOo------------------------------------------------------|
| Ing. Rainer HANTSCH |  mail: office@hantsch.co.at                   |
| Khunngasse 21/20    |   www: http://www.hantsch.co.at               |
| A-1030 Vienna       |   tel: +43-1-79885380    fax: +43-1-798853818 |
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