Re: [hylafax-users] ISDN-BRI vs Analog DID: Hardware recomendations / Automatic routing

[Lee Howard <faxguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2005.01.19 09:40 Steve Melo wrote:

> Also, do I have any other options for automatic routing of faxes?

The common automatic routing options that I know of are...

1) Distinct Lines and Devices

This is functional, but is rather costly for a 20-line setup where you 
seem to be doing fine already with 2 lines.

2) Subaddressing

This works like a charm and requires no additional hardware, but it's 
nearly impossible to educate the people who send faxes to you how to 
send it... even if they do have fax equipment that supports sending it.

3) Routing on TSI

This also works well and requires no additional hardware, but it 
requires maintenance work on the part of the HylaFAX administrator 
every time a new fax sender sends a fax.  And, hopefully your senders 
use some distinctive information in their TSI.  The big downside, 
though, is that the sender doesn't choose where the fax is going.  So 
they can't send faxes to different routes on the same server.

4) Routing on Caller*ID

This also works well, but is nearly identical to the pros/cons of 
routing on TSI.

5) Routing on DID/DNIS/DNID

This is usually what people want: distinctively dialed numbers for each 
route.  The downside, though, is that it requires special lines and 
hardware.  In your case where 2 lines have been adequate for 20 routes, 
I would think that "analog DID" would be more appropriate than a 
fractional T1... unless you can get your fractional T1 at around $100 
per month.

6) DTMF Routing

You need a PBX (that knows the routing, probably from DID) involved in 
this one.  This is also called "two-stage dialing".  The PBX rings the 
line, the modem answers the call and waits for a series of DTMF 
digits.  The PBX sends the routing digits, and then the PBX puts the 
call through.  This works well also, but it pretty much requires that 
you have in-house DID capabilities already... just not the DID-capable 
fax modem.

7) Distinctive Ring

The telco rings with a different cadence for each dialed number that 
terminates on your line(s).  This works well, and added functionality 
for this purpose was added to HylaFAX in 4.2.1.  There is still some 
codework to do to get the distinctive ring identification passed 
through to FaxDispatch, but I'd be willing to do that if someone wanted 
to step up and say they were willing to play guinea-pig for me as I 
tested my development work on them.  I think that distinctive ring is 
limited to 5 different cadences per line, though.  So you'd need 4 or 5 
lines to match your needed 20 routes.  That proably will end up running 
you nearly as much as analog DID.

Lee.

____________________ HylaFAX(tm) Users Mailing List _______________________
 To subscribe/unsubscribe, click http://lists.hylafax.org/cgi-bin/lsg2.cgi
On UNIX: mail -s unsubscribe hylafax-users-request@xxxxxxxxxxx < /dev/null
 *To learn about commercial HylaFAX(tm) support, mail sales@xxxxxxxxx*