myITdepartment

July 8, 2008

Reviewer: Tony Graziano



Recently we installed a MultiTech FaxFinder 110 (it does DID faxing to email and has a very basic Windows client for sending from the PC). If you need something elaborate in the way of faxing, there are plenty of fuller featured fax appliances and servers out there to suit many environments. We also notice the costs of these devices or applications are really astronomical given the technology has been around for a very long time. As a matter of fact the newer models of these devices (Model 120) has a one port DID modem and a one port POTS modem, more features than the previous model (Model 100) and costs a third less than the previous model.

Many companies today (especially small ones) are not as reliant on fax applications that have a robust API or command function. While the phone system we carry has has DID faxing system built into it, it does not have an "outbound" option for sending from the desktop.

DID faxing is handy for three distinct reasons:

1. Diskless.
2. Paperless (it sends the fax as an email to the designated person for that number).
3. Private. Noone sees your fax. This is especially handy in Medical/Accounting/Legal professions and Human Resources environments. This eliminates "prying eyes" and is a big deal to some companies. It also helps your users check their faxes wherever they check their email (home, on the road, etc.).

How to make your FaxFinder (DID faxes) work with a SIP Trunk:

This is what we did to make ours work with our ITSP and an Ingate SIPArator fronting a sipXecs PBX to handle siptrunking to it.

1. Do nothing out of the ordinary in the SIParator, just send the inbound call to your sipx system.:
2. In sipx, create a user with no phone or voicemail. Forward the call to a unique number at a Patton Analog Smartnode gateway.

Example: Assume the sender is dialing 5554222 (your DID for this fax number). Create a user "222" with no phone or voicemail. Forward the number to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , where 222 is the DID digits you expect and send to the IP address of your smartnode.

3. In the SmartNode, create a rule to strip the calls with a leading "9994" and dial the remaining digits "222" and pickup a specific FXO port when dialing. Setup faxbypass for g.711ulaw.
4. Connect the Multitech to the asigned DID port for incoming faxes on the Patton Smartnode. Set up user "222" and enter in the user's email address.

For outbound faxing through a SIP trunk, assuming your ITSP supports this, you can use an analog ATA (Cisco) or another analog gateway with an FXS port as an extension on the sipx system to make full use of dial plans. Most ITSP's do not support t.38 yet, but g.711ulaw seems to work with most of them. The Multitech FaxFinders support inbound calls via POTS or DID ports and outbound calls via the POTS port. So if you need 1 port of each (DID and POTS) or 2, 4 or 8, they have models for that. The Siparator scales fine, so do Patton Smartnodes, so just get a model for whatever your capacity needs are.

What Multitech says about their FaxFinder: The FaxFinder^® fax server is a turnkey solution that connects to an analog
port(s) of a PBX capable of DID to DTMF conversion. It converts faxes to PDF or TIFF files allowing you to receive faxes wherever you are as e-mails and send faxes from any application that can print. The solution provides distributed faxing capabilities, over a WAN, from a corporate office to small remote offices as well as to field sales people. In addition, it provides secure , convenient faxing for LAN users offering a high degree of privacy for both the sender and recipient.

What we did out of the norm is match up the voltage requirments and port types to make sure we had compatible transmit and received methods at the analog level. We then wrote a special config for a Patton Smartnode to do something "out of the ordinary" with it while leveraging an existing SIP based PBX using a sip trunk for DID numbers. 

This seems to be a nice, usable and inexpensive solution for firms looking for the reliability of a diskless solution. It evens cuts the CDR records for inbound and outbound calls in sipx, so that's nice too.