Re: [hylafax-users] Hylafax 400.000 inbound fax x month

[Lee Howard <faxguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2003.10.27 00:59 Matthias Reich wrote:
> Hello List,
>
> yesterday I received this mail from an amigo in argentina
> and would like the list to help matias with his questions
> as I do not have experiences with receiving such a mass of faxes.
>
> Am Sonntag, 26. Oktober 2003 00:13 schrieb Matias Rollan:
> > Matthias,
> >          I am an open source consultant from Argentina. A company
> wants me
> > to give a solution.
> >          They get 400.000 inbound fax per month (38 fax per minute
> > average), they don't send any fax, just receive it.
> >          I would like to know if Hylafax is so scalable to handle
> that
> > kind of  traffic since I couldn't find anyone that handles so
> > many faxes. Also would like you to recommend me what kind of
> > hardware, how many phone lines and any recommendation would be
> > appreciated.
> >          Sincerely,
>
> I think hylafax should be solid enough to handle this amount of faxes.

Certainly HylaFAX should.  I think the more pertinent matter is one of 
hardware selection and subsequent configuration.

> In general I can say that one phoneline is capable of receiving about
> 300 faxes per day (24 hours)

There is generally a "peak" time when more faxes are received than at 
other hours, and generally you'd cater to the peak time rather than an 
average.  But in this case it seems that the line infrastructure is 
already in place since they already receive these faxes... thus they 
must be replacing existing equipment.  And without knowing the details 
on that it would be hard to give any good advice, I think.

> You should use rock-solid modems like multitech
>
> The amount of phonelines should at least be the average of 38 faxes.
> As hardware I would suggest a Network with a few standard PCs.
> Each needs a multi-serial-IO Card (like vscomm or equal) to connect to
> the
> modems, or multi-modems cards (I do not have any experience with).

It's always nice to have two or more "identical" machines running 
HylaFAX each with enough line capacity to handle the entire load but 
configured to only carry their share of the load.  That way if one 
system fails (hardware failures do happen) somehow the others can pick 
up in its stead.  If you can get this configuration to be an "automatic 
fallback" in case of a system outage then that's ideal.

If Matias has analog lines and will be purchasing new modems then he's 
probably going to want to use some multi-port modems.  My only 
recommendation this way is that they *at least* support Fax Class 1 
(reliably tested by others here) in addition to any other Fax Classes 
it may support.  However, with ~40 analog lines he'd be looking at five 
8-port multiport modems per machine.  That's a lot of money and both 
the line-cost and equipment cost may be close to the pricetag on 
digital lines and equipment (which would be a much nicer way to go 
anyway).

Lee.

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