Making the Move to FoIP | Telecom Reseller

SIP Trunking and fax gateways make the transition easy and affordable

by Matthew Brine, Vice President, Fax & Document Distribution Group at OpenText

Some people may laugh when they hear the words ?fax? and ?technology? in the same sentence. They are probably picturing workers wearing leisure suits and shuffling papers in a 1980s office sitcom.

But despite the common misconception that fax is becoming obsolete or irrelevant, fax is still the medium of choice for secure document delivery, whether via the traditional telephone grid (PSTN) or, more recently, over IP. Fax technology continues to make huge leaps alongside Voice over IP (VoIP) and cloud computing technologies.

Fax is still ubiquitous in business, and remains mission critical especially in financial, healthcare, legal and manufacturing firms, where data privacy and communication confirmation is paramount. Today, it is just as common to see someone sending and receiving electronic faxes directly from their desktop as it is to see them faxing paper documents from an appliance fax machine. Many organizations automatically fax from back-end office applications such as an ERP.

How has fax technology changed?

Faxing has been prevalent in business for many years, (remember the thermal paper fax machine?). The most notable change in fax use over the last few years has been the move away from traditional fax over PSTN toward Fax over IP (FoIP). FoIP is simply a method of faxing in which a portion of the transmission occurs over IP-based networks rather than analog phone lines.

With the ubiquity of the Internet and the acceptance of VoIP, it is surprising that some organizations are reluctant to adopt FoIP for document transfer. Perhaps they think that they will need to build a whole new communications infrastructure, or that fax is on its way out. While these notions are incorrect, some companies that do rely on a fax server are stuck maintaining and replacing old fax boards just because they think adding FoIP is complicated. In some cases, this is happening even if they are already comfortably using VoIP?the very technology FoIP relies on.

The truth is, many FoIP providers have made it easy and affordable to make the switch, and fax has long proven its value and resilience. The growing popularity of SIP Trunking?driven until recently mostly by voice?is also spurring FoIP adoption.

It is important to make the differentiation between FoIP and fax subscription services referred to as ?Internet Fax.? With FoIP, fax travels over a company?s IP network or over SIP trunk to a telecommunications provider until it finds a local telephone circuit. Internet Fax providers simply receive a customer?s fax by email and fax it for them for a fee ? very different technologies.

Why FoIP?

FoIP is easy. Getting started requires little hardware investment, and removes unnecessary existing fax machines and the costs associated with them. Businesses can piggy-back on their existing VoIP infrastructure (Cisco, Avaya or other VoIP PBX, phone lines, data lines and servers) or use a fax gateway if they do not yet have VoIP capabilities.

Organizations will save money by moving away from fax machines and traditional fax servers to a FoIP-enabled server. A FoIP-enabled fax server removes the cost of paper, paper-related supplies and fax machine maintenance. Less time spent faxing and filing with paper increases productivity.

A FoIP implementation versus a traditional TDM fax server can also reduce other costs, including the power bill. Additional savings can come from IP consolidation. A FoIP server introduces the option of virtualization, improves IT efficiency, and reduces downtime by consolidating PSTN resources.

Which version of FoIP?

There are basically three different kinds of FoIP protocols that can be used to send and receive faxes: G.711 pass-through, T.37 store-and-forward and T.38 Fax Relay.

• G.711 pass-through works just like a voice over IP (VoIP) call where every component of the fax communication is sent in the form of voice packets. Fax is very sensitive to packet loss, and if you lose some of those voice packets, the fax can easily be corrupted and fail. Also, because the traffic is all voice packets, bandwidth demands can be pretty high.
• T.37 store-and-forward works more like an e-mail where the fax content is sent to a mail server to be processed. Unlike the other FoIP protocols this is not real-time, meaning that there is no way for the sender to know whether the fax is actually being received at the same time you are sending it.
• T.38 fax relay only sends just enough voice packets for a media gateway to determine whether the call is a fax or not. The rest of the fax tones are then relayed from the gateway and not the fax server itself.

Of the three basic FoIP protocols, G.711 pass-through, T.37 store-and-forward and T.38 fax relay, T.38 fax relay is recommended by the Internet Telecommunication Union (ITU) for Group 3 (G3) fax transmission between terminals where, in addition to the PSTN, a portion of the transmission path used between G3 facsimile terminals includes an IP network. ?T.38 fax relay has become the de facto industry standard due to its low bandwidth requirements, built-in redundancy, and third-party interoperability.

What about fax gateways?

Gateways simplify FoIP implementations and provide a cost-effective alternative to traditional in-house fax boards and remote fax servers. Using a gateway, a business can leverage all the benefits and cost advantages of FoIP without a VoIP infrastructure. A fax gateway allows for scalability and flexibility by giving an organization the option of integrating into current or future network infrastructure. Going this route often makes the most sense for businesses planning on upgrading their existing fax server, purchasing a new fax server or planning a future VoIP implementation.

T.38 can use a fax gateway as an intermediate stop during communication between devices. After the fax initiation request is recognized by the receiving device, the gateway handles the rest of the transaction (the sending of queries, responses and voice packets that make up the fax). This makes it a real-time fax with verifiable delivery and receipt and introduces an extra level of security and reliability. T.38 is designed such that a receiving device like a G3 won?t even recognize that the fax traveled over IP.

SIP Trunking

Businesses without VoIP spend a lot of money installing, configuring, and maintaining physical phone lines, fax servers and fax boards, sometimes for several locations in a network. SIP Trunking can move those wires and switches out of the office and into the cloud. Instead of a physical trunk of wires, SIP Trunking provides a virtual trunk over the Internet to PSTN lines.

SIP Trunking is generating a lot of buzz in the world of VoIP and FoIP these days, though many fax users still have questions about how it works.? Session Initiation Protocol or SIP is simply a type of VoIP that begins sessions or ?conversations? between IP addresses. Introduced in the mid- to late 1990s, it became a popular method of cutting telephony costs by adding VoIP capabilities to existing communications infrastructures. Trunking refers to any communications process that uses shared rather than individual lines to increase capacity and lower costs.

SIP providers deliver voice, fax and other data over IP, waiting to return to physical telephone lines until they reach the local grid of the receiving device.

When using SIP Trunking for Fax over IP, service is provided by?Internet Telephony Service Providers?(ITSPs) and is much cheaper than PSTN because of the capacity savings that come from shared lines. While the final destination of the fax is still on the PSTN, the ITSP manages this termination and finds phone lines as close as possible to the receiving device.

FoIP as a stepping stone to UC

Implementing FoIP can also be a wise step toward a migration to Unified Communications (UC). If a business is planning a move to UC, but does not have the resources to implement an entire system all at once, starting with SIP Trunking and a gateway to fax will get them well on their way and save them money at the same time.

Especially if a business has already moved to a VoIP network, FoIP enablement adds another layer of future-proofing. If a business doesn?t have FoIP, they are reliant on fax boards. If the business has fax boards, it can?t virtualize. The solution is using a fax gateway to virtualize the server with a software-based fax solution.

No matter how businesses are using fax, it has become clear that FoIP?and specifically SIP Trunking using T.38 with a gateway?is a great way to implement virtualized, scalable enterprise fax and eliminate the need for paper-based faxing, fax boards and phone lines.

Choosing the right vendor

If you are one of the many businesses shopping around for a FoIP solution using SIP Trunking, it is important to first choose the right vendor, and second, to stay with them. Do your research.

Compatibility remains a problem for FoIP, even with the rise of T.38 as the preferred protocol, so knowing that your vendor has the capability to work with the technologies implemented within your business?including those of your partners and customers?can save some serious IT headaches. Always ask to see the public interoperability lists and compatibility information supported by the vendor. Many T.38 application providers exist in the market today that have built their integration based on the ITU T.38 standard. While they may conform to a degree, many are unable to test and certify that their technology works across the many fax machines and gateways users will interact with in the real world.

Find a vendor with a solid reputation for technical support. Some good places to start learning about your options are trade magazines, web sites, and customer reviews. After you have chosen the right vendor for you, stay with them. By dealing with a single vendor, you can be confident in continued compatibility and work together to ensure the fax solution you choose is scalable so you can plan for future growth.

The Future of FAX

Fax is the easiest, most widely used, and most cost-effective form of secure information exchange available today. At OpenText, we expect fax to remain center stage well into the future, and industry analysts such as Gartner and Davidson predict the same. ?We are working hard to improve the usability and performance of our fax solutions as well as working on new technologies that will:

1. Increase fax number to fax number communication via IP outside of the PSTN.
2. Expand the use of secure file transfer, such as the RightFax SecureDocs module, as a complement to fax technology.
3. Improve fax services to reduce the overall IT burden while maintaining data privacy.

Matthew Brine is the vice president of the OpenText Fax & Document Distribution Group. OpenText is the market leader in fax and document management solutions.

If you are interested in learning more about FoIP, SIP Trunking and gateway servers, visit OpenText FDDG online at http://faxsolutions.opentext.com/fax-gateway-for-foip.aspx. ??

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