From the trend in these comments it is becoming clear to me that people aren't getting my point. It isn't a protocol issue. I have tried EVERY protocol and EVERY setting.
I used my Vonage fax line without fail for three years and hundreds of faxes then suddenly it stopped working. My ISP was the same, modem was the same, router was the same, network was the same, analog adapter was the same, and fax machine was the same. What happened? Vonage has been working with me and certainly has no reason to not want my fax to work. The only thing that could have changed is at my ISP's policies, which was my point.
Bob
Faxing over VOIP is not so easy. It is not a bandwidth problem per se, but more complicated. See: http://www.soft-switch.org/foip.html
That's a pretty common issue on VoIP, actually. The reputable providers with would alert you to this (almost guaranteed to happen) issue with fax over VoIP. I don't know the technical reasons why it doesn't work well but I see it a lot, even with decent provider like Speakeasy. At least they'll alert you to the issue and, in fact, advise against using fax machines on their VoIP service.
Vonage is anything but "decent" when it comes to support, IME. You get what you pay for.
It's probably something much less dramatic: Generally, fax machines don't work with VOIP due to the audio compression that most VOIP uses in order to get voice travelling over IP in the most efficient manner possible. There's a thingo called T.38 that deals with translating fax tones into something that's IP-compatible, but both your local ATA and your VOIP provider's PSTN gateway have to support it.
Well, prioritized or not, it's not likely to be non-neutrality that is killing your fax. The encoding and compression of the audio stream tends to demolish modem communications.
I know Vonage offers a "fax line" option, but my experience with such things (though not with Vonage) is that they will work, maybe, on a Tuesday with a blue moon. And that's if everything is perfect. I pretty much would not expect that to work.
Having said that, I know that some people do get it to work and given your actual bandwidth figures it's not a matter of whether or not the cable company is screwing you. It's possible that it's not being allocated correctly from your end for reliable fax service. I have no idea what you use for your router but if it's not providing QoS services then you're likely to have problems right there, even if everything else is just fine. Every time something spurts traffic over the internet it'll blow your modem connection away; with my system it would break up even voice traffic.
It took me some time to work out how to get really reliable service when using both Vonage and internet services simultaneously; it's easy enough if you pay for a commercial-grade router, but I was not willing to spend quite that much. A Linksys WRT54GL and dd-wrt software is sufficient to the task although it will take a little fiddling to tune it correctly.
By the way, the Vonage device I have (some kind of Linksys box that supposedly supports QoS) really doesn't handle the job well at all. That's not surprising given that the standard Linksys software doesn't work either.
Best of luck, but if it were me I would either ditch the fax line and send PDFs around (which is what I do) or get a real POTS line for that service. Vonage is only a nice cheap solution when it works.
I have Comcast residential. Back in February I had some line trouble with them. After 3 service calls - and I will admit they came out quickly, unlike my local phone company - the internet connection has been working reliably. In any event, I have been running a speed test quite regularly, and keeping the notes. Here they are (and I hope the actual post formats better than the preview) -
02/12 15:27 Download speed measured at 9.80 MBPS, upload at 369 KBPS, QOS = 49%
02/12 15:51 Download speed measured at 9.93 MBPS, upload at 373 KBPS, QOS = 78%
02/12 16:49 Download speed measured at 10.2 MBPS, upload at 355 KBPS, QOS = 91%
02/12 17:02 Download speed measured at 7.86 MBPS, upload at 371 KBPS, QOS = 73%
02/12 18:50 Download speed measured at 6.86 MBPS, upload at 369 KBPS, QOS = 58%
02/12 20:34 Download speed measured at 6.26 MBPS, upload at 371 KBPS, QOS = 41%
02/12 22:33 Download speed measured at 9.70 MBPS, upload at 371 KBPS, QOS = 82%
02/12 23:16 Download speed measured at 10.6 MBPS, upload at 371 KBPS, QOS = 59%
02/13 19:51 Download speed measured at 7.73 MBPS, upload at 366 KBPS, QOS = 78%
02/13 21:56 Download speed measured at 4.64 MBPS, upload at 370 KBPS, QOS = 58%
02/13 21:57 Download speed measured at 3.83 MBPS, upload at 693 KBPS, QOS = 29%
02/13 23:56 Download speed measured at 9.93 MBPS, upload at 374 KBPS, QOS = 75%
02/14 20:45 Download speed measured at 4.02 MBPS, upload at 372 KBPS, QOS = 41%
02/15 05:42 Download speed measured at 8.94 MBPS, upload at 371 KBPS, QOS = 76%
02/15 22:14 Download speed measured at 7.18 MBPS, upload at 371 KBPS, QOS = 59%
02/16 17:28 Download speed measured at 8.85 MBPS, upload at 372 KBPS, QOS = 65%
02/16 20:45 Download speed measured at 7.70 MBPS, upload at 371 KBPS, QOS = 67%
02/17 14:42 Download speed measured at 7.05 MBPS, upload at 370 KBPS, QOS = 90%
02/17 19:07 Download speed measured at 5.53 MBPS, upload at 369 KBPS, QOS = 44%
02/18 14:52 Download speed measured at 8.58 MBPS, upload at 371 KBPS, QOS = 69%
02/18 19:33 Download speed measured at 8.88 MBPS, upload at 372 KBPS, QOS = 86%
02/19 11:42 Download speed measured at 5.53 MBPS, upload at 366 KBPS, QOS = 69%
02/19 16:50 Download speed measured at 8.29 MBPS, upload at 372 KBPS, QOS = 76%
02/20 19:20 Download speed measured at 8.35 MBPS, upload at 371 KBPS, QOS = 58%
02/21 03:32 Download speed measured at 9.67 MBPS, upload at 368 KBPS, QOS = 89%
02/21 21:31 Download speed measured at 8.75 MBPS, upload at 374 KBPS, QOS = 65%
02/22 05:03 Download speed measured at 7.35 MBPS, upload at 371 KBPS, QOS = 56%
02/22 18:48 Download speed measured at 8.81 MBPS, upload at 373 KBPS, QOS = 70%
02/23 20:40 Download speed measured at 9.27 MBPS, upload at 370 KBPS, QOS = 75%
02/24 22:09 Download speed measured at 5.31 MBPS, upload at 373 KBPS, QOS = 75%
02/25 19:38 Download speed measured at 7.42 MBPS, upload at 372 KBPS, QOS = 36%
02/26 20:02 Download speed measured at 8.78 MBPS, upload at 370 KBPS, QOS = 65%
02/26 21:55 Service appears to be inoperative
02/26 21:57 Service restored after resetting modem / router connection
02/27 18:15 Download speed measured at 8.45 MBPS, upload at 369 KBPS, QOS = 69%
02/28 18:15 Download speed measured at 9.59 MBPS, upload at 370 KBPS, QOS = 76%
03/01 17:40 Download speed measured at 5.91 MBPS, upload at 370 KBPS, QOS = 40%
03/02 03:14 Download speed measured at 8.14 MBPS, upload at 369 KBPS, QOS = 63%
03/02 20:55 Download speed measured at 7.97 MBPS, upload at 370 KBPS, QOS = 71%
03/03 11:39 Download speed measured at 7.19 MBPS, upload at 369 KBPS, QOS = 76%
03/03 21:39 Download speed measured at 6.95 MBPS, upload at 370 KBPS, QOS = 86%
03/04 21:39 Download speed measured at 9.11 MBPS, upload at 371 KBPS, QOS = 67%
03/05 01:50 Download speed measured at 8.20 MBPS, upload at 370 KBPS, QOS = 60%
03/05 18:54 Download speed measured at 7.09 MBPS, upload at 373 KBPS, QOS = 64%
03/06 04:10 Download speed measured at 9.54 MBPS, upload at 371 KBPS, QOS = 63%
03/07 17:53 Download speed measured at 6.16 MBPS, upload at 372 KBPS, QOS = 66%
03/08 05:11 Download speed measured at 9.74 MBPS, upload at 372 KBPS, QOS = 86%
03/08 21:36 Download speed measured at 6.71 MBPS, upload at 373 KBPS, QOS = 85%
03/09 19:50 Download speed measured at 8.03 MBPS, upload at 373 KBPS, QOS = 63%
03/11 01:34 Download speed measured at 7.35 MBPS, upload at 370 KBPS, QOS = 54%
03/12 20:45 Download speed measured at 7.80 MBPS, upload at 372 KBPS, QOS = 50%
03/13 21:06 Download speed measured at 9.60 MBPS, upload at 645 KBPS, QOS = 69%
03/15 18:30 Download speed measured at 8.80 MBPS, upload at 370 KBPS, QOS = 56%
03/16 19:36 Download speed measured at 8.87 MBPS, upload at 372 KBPS, QOS = 72%
03/17 17:10 Download speed measured at 8.79 MBPS, upload at 371 KBPS, QOS = 55%
03/19 20:00 Download speed measured at 5.40 MBPS, upload at 742 KBPS, QOS = 60%
03/20 03:25 Download speed measured at 8.27 MBPS, upload at 750 KBPS, QOS = 56%
03/20 05:12 Download speed measured at 7.61 MBPS, upload at 750 KBPS, QOS = 42%
03/20 17:57 Download speed measured at 8.16 MBPS, upload at 749 KBPS, QOS = 74%
03/21 04:36 Download speed measured at 10.0 MBPS, upload at 749 KBPS, QOS = 74%
03/21 20:12 Download speed measured at 9.79 MBPS, upload at 758 KBPS, QOS = 87%
03/22 04:32 Download speed measured at 9.68 MBPS, upload at 752 KBPS, QOS = 71%
03/22 22:08 Download speed measured at 7.49 MBPS, upload at 742 KBPS, QOS = 61%
03/23 21:37 Download speed measured at 7.36 MBPS, upload at 750 KBPS, QOS = 73%
03/24 ??:?? Download speed measured at 9.13 MBPS, upload at 746 KBPS, QOS = 58%
03/24 19:39 Download speed measured at 7.38 MBPS, upload at 762 KBPS, QOS = 48%
03/25 19:06 Download speed measured at 9.11 MBPS, upload at 745 KBPS, QOS = 53%
03/26 03:06 Download speed measured at 9.50 MBPS, upload at 737 KBPS, QOS = 77%
03/26 21:40 Download speed measured at 7.61 MBPS, upload at 737 KBPS, QOS = 79%
03/27 19:56 Download speed measured at 9.68 MBPS, upload at 737 KBPS, QOS = 75%
03/28 17:59 Download speed measured at 8.61 MBPS, upload at 741 KBPS, QOS = 81%
03/29 19:33 Download speed measured at 5.31 MBPS, upload at 750 KBPS, QOS = 63%
03/30 19:51 Download speed measured at 9.44 MBPS, upload at 743 KBPS, QOS = 85%
04/01 13:02 Download speed measured at 8.99 MBPS, upload at 747 KBPS, QOS = 82%
04/02 21:53 Download speed measured at 4.54 MBPS, upload at 748 KBPS, QOS = 53%
04/03 20:55 Download speed measured at 8.33 MBPS, upload at 745 KBPS, QOS = 84%
04/04 21:24 Download speed measured at 8.11 MBPS, upload at 752 KBPS, QOS = 85%
04/05 21:20 Download speed measured at 7.33 MBPS, upload at 747 KBPS, QOS = 80%
04/06 03:18 Download speed measured at 9.47 MBPS, upload at 742 KBPS, QOS = 71%
04/07 04:59 Download speed measured at 10.3 MBPS, upload at 748 KBPS, QOS = 68%
04/09 19:24 Download speed measured at 7.01 MBPS, upload at 742 KBPS, QOS = 53%
04/10 19:07 Download speed measured at 9.38 MBPS, upload at 749 KBPS, QOS = 63%
04/11 22:58 Download speed measured at 8.66 MBPS, upload at 748 KBPS, QOS = 43%
This is the speed test in the Vonage web site. What I find interesting is the upload speed doubled on March 20, for no obvious reason, though I am not complaining and has stayed there. As you can see the download speed varies all over the place. Most of the time they fail to meet their speed boost promise, but, for the most part, they appear to be meeting their 6 meg/second standard.
I also have Vonage. It was installed after the local monoply phone company, after 2 years of trying, failed to fix my regular line so it worked reliably. I tried - and failed - to contact my old dial up ISP from a machine that does not have an ethernet port through the Vonage line, too, though, obviously, this was not a fax connection.
Faxing over a VoIP line requires a fair amont of precision on the provider's part. Many of wholesale carriers who transport VoIP calls to the PSTN strugle with T38 which is a necessary protocol to facilitate faxing with the least amount of network concessions. It can be done with other codecs but it then becomes far more prone to failure due to congestion or dropped packets. My guess is that Vonage has changed some routing and T38 is being comprimised. I suggest you try at 3AM and you'll discover network congestion is not the issue. I do agree with all points made regarding the prioritization of traffic though. A free ride is getting scarce.
I have Vonage as well plus the Fax Line option. The fax works fine for me and I haven't had any strange issues. Is it possible that your second line, while connected to a fax machine, wasn't designated as a fax line with Vonage? The compression of voice can cause problems and I suspect it's treated somewhat different in a Vonage fax line, but I cannot say for sure.
Before anyone things I'm another one of those Vonage groupies, though... I can say that my voice line has suffered many problems with very poor (robotic-like) sound quality, even though the fax line worked fine. But then, I rarely use a fax and frequently use the phone... so who knows?
Thanks for the article Robert, it was a great read and an interesting perspective on Net Neutrality.
Kelly Martin
"So lots of we ... have been sitting around..."
I think it's your grammar karma that's killing your fax, Bob.
just get a scanner,who uses fax now anyway?
I won't comment on your FOVOIP issues, but I will say that these various online "speed tests" are in no way a reliable indicator of the actual bandwidth you have from your immediate upstream service provider. First of all, networks are not measured in "speed"... speed, by definition is a measure of time & distance. Nobody really cares how FAR your packets are travelling. What you are really measuring is CAPACITY. How MUCH data per second, not how fast your data is moving.
Additionally your result can, and WILL be skewed my numerous factors, which literally can change from minute to minute, of every day. Network Traffic is like weather in that respect. It can have predictable patterns, but it is never exactly the same.
I am sitting, right now at this very moment in the Network Operations Center of an Internet Datacenter. I have network monitoring equipment all around me. I know EXACTLY what the total capacity, and current usage of each of our fiber optic connections to the world. I am literally one hop from our boundary routers which maintain our status as an Autonomous Network. Our connectivity is all via synchronous gigabit Ethernet circuits. I can watch, in real time as the bits flow in and out. I KNOW exactly what this network should be capable of doing. I connect to a Speakeasy's "Speed Test" server here in my own metro area, and it says:
73568kbps download, 1261kbps upload.
What that tells me is that the test itself is either bogus, or perhaps more generously "tuned to supply a specific result." If anything my up/down numbers should be pretty much the same. Don't believe what these tests tell you.
--chuck
Of course, under your shared payment plan, that simply favors those that can afford to pay.
If I can get money off my bill for using Google but no money back if I use Altavista, I'm going to use Google every time even if Altavista is better. (I haven't used it in years, so I wouldn't know, just using it as an example.)
Sounds an awful lot like these credit cards charging merchants 3% and then giving us 1% back. Not sure if that's illegal, but it still comes out of our pockets as merchants raise prices to recoup that 3%.
Fax over VoIP is a really horrible concept in the first place, only marginally less appalling than attaching a modem to a VoIP line for dial-up Internet access. I wouldn't be proud of it even if I got it working.
As for net neutrality, I'm a little surprised by your surprise, Bob. You know about VLANs, don't you? For those that don't, this is where one physical (local) network infrastructure can be made to seem like several distinct networks for the purposes of making them more manageable. ISPs can do exactly the same thing within the bounds of their network infrastructure, but they can prioritise one virtual network over another. This is a good idea: you want your network management functions to out-prioritise everything else, don't you? How are you going to fix a flooding attack if the flood is crippling your network management tools?
So prioritisation is not in itself a bad thing. Even IP itself has built-in notions of "type of service" to differentiate the handling of packets. (By and large those flags are ignored, but they do exist.) "Best effort delivery" does not mean that all packets are handled equally; rather, it contrasts with "guaranteed delivery". "Best effort" ultimately means "the network can drop the packet without telling you, should it be necessary to do so."
The kind of thing I'd like to see explicitly forbidden in legislation is anti-competitive behaviour and racketeering. These things are arguably illegal now, but it might be nice to get the concepts codified as they relate to networks. For instance, anti-competitive behaviour: ISP-X has its own VoIP service, and thus deliberately degrades the performance of anything resembling a VoIP packet which is not a part of its VoIP service. Racketeering: ISP-X demands payment from search-provider-Y, even though search-provider-Y is not directly connected to ISP-X's network, under threat of deliberately degraded performance.
The kind of non-neutrality that you're just going to have to get used to is that of competitive bidding. There is no decent reason why an ISP shouldn't give higher priority service to someone who pays for it. Yes, this means that the rest of us get whatever is left over. Actually, that's the way it works all the way from the top down: top priority seems to have the whole network to themselves, and each subsequent priority seems to get whatever's left over after the higher priorities have taken their share. This sort of thing already happens with ad placement, and there's no reason it shouldn't happen with packets.
Most ISPs are naturally limited in what they can offer, because they do not control the entire end-to-end path, and they don't typically control the priority of their packets once they reach someone else's network. Attempting to exert coercive influence over other networks is racketeering; paying for priority is not. But I don't care how much you pay your ISP: packets are all the same to me when they reach my web server or mail server -- unless one offers to pay me for priority access. I'm not expecting any offers soon.
Competitive bidding of this sort is a funny thing: if someone pays to get served in line before you, your net wait time in the line goes up, but you don't get compensated for that fact. If the service provider was to be extremely fair, they'd offer you a discount for your inconvenience. Such fairness can't be enforced -- you have to rely on the proper working of a competitive marketplace for prices to find their "fair" level.
QoS is simply not guaranteed via the Internet. Thus, voice and fax services cannot work perfectly, due to packet loss. Even inside organizations that manage end-to-end wires, QoS is not always a guarantee. Throw in wireless, and you ARE guaranteed to add variables for more dropped packets. But, don't mind me, I'm sticking to the fax. ;)
Having switched my entire household to VoIP and no longer able to do outbound fax, I entirely sympathize.
Vonage and other VoIP vendors claim they can support fax, but all most of them do is switch their codecs (to something like G.731 or G.711) in the hopes that digitizing fax data a little more finely will solve the problem, but as you've discovered, it's really hit and miss.
The underlying problem is that VoIP over UDP, by definition, does not guarantee 100% packet delivery so it's still a crapshoot, depending on network congestion (or perhaps as you assert, the ISP giving lower priority to Fax data).
If you haven't looked at it already, a solution that's been rattling around for a while is ITU standard TU.38 for sending Fax over VoIP. Here are some links:
- [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.38_Fax ]
- [ http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/T.38 ]
- [ http://www.intel.com/network/csp/resources/white_papers/4631web.htm ]
- [ http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9002627 ]
and
- [http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/2006/11/known-t38-service-providers-for-faxing.html] (a list of T.38 service providers).
Your larger point about net neutrality is taken, but your fax isn't necessarily failing because ISPs are mucking about with packets. It's failing because analog faxes were never designed to work over digital VoIP.
I think the solution is transparency. ISPs have been prioritizing packets forever, and will contine to do so. But they should be required to publish the priorities on their web site (in a user understandable format) so that a consumer who wants to use a fax machine on VOIP can determine if it will work. Let them provide whatever level of service they want, as long as they're up front about it. Don't like their priorities? Switch to another ISP.
What does "lots of we" mean? Is this another piece of computer English like the programme'rs apostrophe?
This is exactly the reason why my company retained one bellsouth land line (for the fax) when we moved to Cox for phone service. The fax line always works and can be used to call Cox when their phone and internet service dies.
What on earth made you think that ISPs "best effort" meant that they treated all packets equally? A mother will always make the best effort for her children and the ISPs are no different. I hate to put it this way but - all packets are equal, it's just that some are more equal than others.
You can probably get your fax to work if you change the codec from the default (G.729?) to uncompressed (G.711).
Perhaps the problem is simply VoIP compression and latency interferring with the fax modem.
In fact, I just checked with some guys I work with who set up Cisco VoIP call centers and they say that fax & VoIP is specifically not recommended.
So it sounds like you need to get yourself a cheap POTS line.
Even FiOS seems to be bandwidth limited. What's to stop Verizon from recognizing the speed test sites and opening the tap wide, to show bandwidth we are paying for, but shaping traffic as they otherwise see fit? I use a download manager that shows transfer rate as a graph over time, and it always shows a similarly shaped curve when I do a large download using multiple connections. Starts out fast but tapers down to maybe 40% of my supposed always-available rate. And when I use an anonymizing service that uses a vpn tunnel to it, bandwidth never measures close to rated. Could be the vpn overhead or their servers, but I'm naturally suspicious.
Thanks Robert X. for warning that even business class service is likely subject to shaping.
I think you are hung up on bandwidth as a measure of what you get from your ISP. The focus should be on packet delivery speed and its variation. Jitter and delay are what adversly affect VoIP performance.
If you want good VoIP, you should be prepared to pay extra. How to measure jitter and delay though - a bit more difficult than measuring raw speed.
As for your fax, I suggest you get a line from your local wireline company. They have an infrastructure that gives you QoS 'out of the box', no 'best efforts' crap.
Just a data point:
I use Lingo as my VOIP provider, over TW's Road Runner internet service, and I've been able to send faxes over it without an issue. This isn't a second "fax" line, just using my voice line for an occasional send. Lingo says that faxes probably won't work, but I figured I'd give it a try, and it seems to work fine.
How well do faxes actually work over VOIP? I used to run an asterisk box with G.729 and GSM encoding, and I *thought* that lossy codecs like these optimize away frequencies outside the human audible range. I assumed that faxes operate at least partially in this range, which is why they don't work over VOIP lines (or any other medium with this type of lossy codec). I'm probably wrong, and didn't go research before this comment, I'm just throwing it out there.
Sorry, didn't bother to read the comments before I sent one ine. This is a the same user as the previous post, but not as the one two posts up. So, yeah, VOIP codecs might not support faxes.
The thing to understand is that the carriers have moved to packet switched networks (primarily metro Ethernet and MPLS). As such, while there may only be a single physical network, there are several logical networks (ala VLANs). So, they give these different logical networks different priorities at the physical network level. So, their Internet traffic goes into the logical network that has a physical network priority of best effort. From your perspective that means they do, in fact, already prioritize traffic but, from an "Internet" perspective the do not. And, in that "best effort" network you get the leftovers if a premium customer has an SLA that requires the Internet bandwidth to be constrained or delayed to get his traffic through in a timely fashion.
Ask any of the large carriers about their MPLS offerings and this becomes quite clear. This allows them to over-book their networks with the understanding that customers usually by more bandwidth than they actually consume.
The thing to understand is that the carriers have moved to packet switched networks (primarily metro Ethernet and MPLS). As such, while there may only be a single physical network, there are several logical networks (ala VLANs). So, they give these different logical networks different priorities at the physical network level. So, their Internet traffic goes into the logical network that has a physical network priority of best effort. From your perspective that means they do, in fact, already prioritize traffic but, from an "Internet" perspective the do not. And, in that "best effort" network you get the leftovers if a premium customer has an SLA that requires the Internet bandwidth to be constrained or delayed to get his traffic through in a timely fashion.
Ask any of the large carriers about their MPLS offerings and this becomes quite clear. This allows them to over-book their networks with the understanding that customers usually by more bandwidth than they actually consume.
prioritizing packets based on their *type* is not the same thing as prioritizing them based on whether or not the server they originated from has paid extra money to raise their priority. indeed, the internet would slow to a crawl if some level of prioritization didn't take place. you're comparing apples to oranges.
fax is an analog technology.
VoIP is a digital technology (sampling of analog).
If you ever get your analog working over digital, consider yourself lucky.
Was never able to get my fax to work with Vonage and Comcast either. Was able to get it to work with Sunrocket and SBC (At&t for now) DSL though.
Side note on Vonage. I quit there service and had my number transferred to SBC here in So. FL. Vonage continued to bill me for calls to and from another Vonage number (Only one) for three months. This was after my number was working through SBC. They insisted that it was me receiving and making the calls even though the router for the service was in a draw for the whole time. Not sure how but it seems that after canceling Vontage the Vontage customer that was calling me on my new VoIP some how triggered there system into billing me for the call both ways. The customer service Rep still insisted that three months of calls (which only had this number and on top of that had the cancel order in front of her) were made and received by me. When I asked to speak to a manager she said that she was a manager like everyone in the call center and as such there was no one higher to talk too. So be warned if you try to change VoIP service to get your fax back.
Friend of mine had the same problem with download speeds not matching promised performance. Tech support asked if he was using a rounter (he was). Was told that advertised speeds were true only when computer directly attached to the network. Many (most) routers provide some firewall function. SPI (stateful packet inspection) does take time. When he bypassed the router and connedted computer directly to net, download speed was as advertised (actually a bit better). I have the same trouble with Vonage and fax with a small ISP. Wrote it off as fax machine gone bad.
i am a vonage user, over suddenlink digital cable, standard home service, i can send and recive faxes over my line, occasionally i run into problems such as fax machine not answering the call, or the fax isnt properly transmitted due to noise on the line (vonages service isnt as good as advertised, but still better than verizon's price) so i doubt its the codec's stopping transmission, it would seem that the user either has their quality setting in their vonage router set too low (ie anything other than "best") or that the isp is assinging vonage packets a lower priority thus creating too much line noise...
You don't say specifically whether you have a Vonage fax line or not. I don't have any idea how Vonage systems work but I would hope that the Vonage fax line uses T.38 since regular VOIP is unlikely to work well, even using a G.711 codec. With a given T.38 implementation, there may still be interoperability problems with specific models of fax machines. Getting Vonage to fix problems of that sort is likely to be very painful (but doesn't sound like your issue). My experience from a previous life suggests that even fax machines don't always interoperate and putting anything in between the 2 fax machines only lowers your chances.
You, Cringely, should have done some investigation before you started writing. That is, with some basic technical knowledge you would not have needed the investigation but that seems to be missing as well.
From the very beging of data communication we have tried to speed things up by using as much as possible of the available sound spectrum. Fax is no difference, so it will use any possible tone within the range know to travel reliably through the old telephone system. That includes pretty high as well as pretty low tones.
From the very beginning of sending sound over the internet (including Voip) we have been trying to minimize the amount of bandwith needed to transmit the data. One of the steps in this effort has allways been to strip any sounds you won't be able to hear anyway. This include removeing the highest and lowest sounds. Getting the picture allready?
Apart from that basic issue there are a lot of other complex issues with lossy sound compression and fax data making it a very hard to get it working.
It a stupid thing anyway, setting up a sound channel over a dataconnection (Voip) and then trying to set up a dataconnection over that sound channel to transfer an image (Fax). Basic technical insight again.
I've been a Vonage subscriber for 2+ years and have never been able to get my fax working. I have my Vonage service set to max bitrate to get the best possible voice quality.
The fax is daisy-chained with the phones on the same line. My throughput according to www.speakeasy.com is higher down, but lower up than what my ISP (Mediacom) promises.
For what that's worth, I gave up on faxing from home as a lost cause.
But it is also worthwhile to note that I have 2 cordless phones (both 5.8's) daisy-chained on the same line. One (a Panasonic) is clear as a bell. The VTech is virtually unusable with the VOIP. Thus, it may be my cheap Brother fax, rather than a VOIP-based problem.
"It all connects but wont sync no matter what I try."
The problem is right there. Synchronization. Signal latency over a VoIP call (while acceptably low for conversation) is constantly fluctuating beyond the ability of the FAX machines to reconcile synch.
In contrast, latency over an actual phone line is relatively constant.
Even if you did have some "premium tier" QoS connection, you would still be unlikely to FAX properly.
jurgen is spot on:
There's a thing called T.38 External Link that deals with translating fax tones into something that's IP-compatible, but both your local ATA and your VOIP provider's PSTN gateway have to support it.
I can guarantee you that most local ATA's Don't support T.38. If you are able to get vonage to make your fax line prefer T.38 what will happen is. Some people will be able to send a fax - other won't connect to you at all.
VOIP is way too young yet.
Traditional voice service is highly regulated and has stiff fines associated if QOS is not guaranteed.
With data all of the finely tuned regulation isn't there - at all.
So you get different providers with different technology levels prioritizing traffic differently.
Thus you get alot of latancy issue, re-transmit problems, and all sortf of interesting stuff.
But data isn't a guaranteed service like traditional voice, and probably won't be for a long time.
For data to become a guaranteed service like traditional Voice, Data would have to becom as heavily regulated as Voice service is now.
Carriers do not want this.
Cringely has also mis-identified what Net Neutrailty is.
Net neutraility is not about turning Data into a guaranteed service.
It's about preventing the big telcos from degrading service intentionally.
Say I'm AT&T and 40% of google's traffic goes through my network - destined for other ISP's.
I can make google traffic from all of my compeditors really crappy. Unless my compeditors either peer directly with Google (bypassing my network), or they pay an extortion fee.
Or I can make MSN traffic a higher-priority for all of my customers, because I'm getting payola from MSN. Making my customers MSN expierience better.
I could do this with VOIP as well, I could make Vonage traffic a lower priority - submit it to higher latancies and more dropped packets, than Sun Rocket who's padding my coffers.
This could artifically inflate the cost of entry onto the internet. Established services like Google or MSN could afford to directly peer or offer a payola scheme to the largest carriers, for better QOS.
Currently the model works like this: You buy service from your ISP. Your ISP gives you a certain level of QOS in thier network. All traffic on your link is treated the same.
A lower QOS & oversubscription lowers cost of entry. Asynchronuz service giving you 6MB down & 1.5MB up costs significantly less than Synchronus service of 1.5MB up & 1.5MB down.
Currently you are able to negotiate a higher QOS with your ISP, how many people share your backhaul, wether your packets are prioritized over other customers.
But this is only on your ISP's network - all data traffic is treated equally (thier uplinks are also subject to the same rules).
Net Neutraility wants to keep this status quo, and wants to prevent the introduction of market forces you cannot control.
Drop the second line from Vonage, and purchase a third party e-fax service. Get your fax number ported to the new provider, and start receiving your faxes in your e-mail box.
Have you ever heard of vocoders? VoIP traffic (like cell-phone traffic) is passed through a vocoder before being sent across the network. Vocoder stands for "voice coder" though technically most of them are more accurately described as "speech coders."
A fax will send data as white noise (remember when you used a modem do dial up and you could hear the hiss?) and as such the voice coder will completely brutalize it. Once it's reconstructed it will be just garbage. Use your fax line to call your voice line, and then listen to a real fax and you'll notice the difference.
If you are going to insist on using a voice solution for data, at least turn on the error-correction feature of your fax machine. This will split up the data into packets which can then be re-sent if needed. Also turn down the default speed to 2400 baud or 1200 baud.
A much better solution is to find a pdf->fax gateway. That way you can send faxes to people by uploading/emailing a pdf document to the gateway.
I don't believe the problem is as complicated as you think. Yes, low Quality of Service (QOS) affects latency, and VoIP AUDIO is likely sent via UDP (though it's allowed to be sent via TCP as well at the discretion of the operator), which unlike TCP will not resend packets that are lost along the way because of buffer overflows (which will happen if you flood a line with higher priority packets) because (as mentioned) if your speaking and miss a brief part of a sound, you will interpolate those gaps. The silly part is there is support for abstract fax signaling in the standards out there already (much like the DTMF tones for sending presses of the button during a call), which allows the data to be interpreted and translated to abstract packets before reaching Vonage, and back again by your adapter very easily. See ITU T.38 which applies to both SIP, and H.323 telephone signaling standards. Think of how much easier it is to encode a byte instead of 8 tones per piece of data your sending. The problem is that emails, which transmit functionally equivalent representations of documents to a fax machine (think of an email if you will with a pdf attachment for example) but in a way that de-emphasizes the priority of latency to successful transmission. QOS which refers to prioritized service levels was NEVER guaranteed by the IETF, in fact the network is typically considered so robust BEACUSE it's not typically an issue. In that sense VoIP in any form was never what the internet was created for, it was just adapted to leverage commodity hardware's econimies of scale.
You, Cringly, Should get a virtual fax for dealing with the dinosaurs who still want to send you an old school fax (I just get a pdf attached to an email when the fax comes in), and learn the ways of the Virtual Private Network (VPN) which will give you much more flexible access to your network in any case than a dialup solution of any sort.
There's no harm in being vigilant, and it's good to discuss, but cries to regulate should always be drowned out by the power of people to share discourse and vote with their feet. Never expect a politician to do a better job of handling business than you could.
I don't know what the big fuss is about. Of course cable Internet operators have been doing "traffic shaping" (or its better marketing term "Quality of Service"). The IP Internet has always been "best effort" delivery. I think the solution might be wireless broadband. That is going to be the next fight.
The whole concept of Vonage never appealed to me because there are way too many points of failure. You have to be able to support your product/service when it's created, and the net goes completely against that grain. What I really keyed in on was the fact Vonage couldn't even provide basic information about this or the latency issues that may occur.
Net neutrality still escapes me, I have to admit. I know the technology, but I just can't see into that crystal ball.
I'll be sticking with my POTS for some time to come. :)
Bob, perhaps the reason Comcast (my ISP as well) likes the Speakeasy speed tests is that they give those packets higher priority (for any of a number of reasons), than they give packets to other good speed-testing sites (e.g. DSLReports).
As for your fax problem, faxes may be slow, but timings and frequencies need to be rather precise. You already admit to poor voice service. Thing is, the human ear and mind are far more forgiving than your fax machine. I'm sure you'll get lots of pointers to Internet-based fax services that let you retrieve the images afterwards in a more reasonable manner.
The real problem is that YOU are the consumer, YOU pay the bills, and YOU ARE NOT allowed to set your own QoS bits the way you'd like them best.
you're an idiot. stop creating a conspiracy when there isn't one. fax doesn't work over VOIP because of codec issues. Fax over IP aka FOIP the T.38 protocol works beautifully. Maybe you should subscribe to that service....
Bob, afaik professional VoIP stuff terminates modems and fax signals, then send the bits as data over IP en convert it back to audio at the other end. Not only is it smarter in terms of bandwidth, but it actually works.
The interesting issue is Net Neutrality and best effort. I agree that we should all hope that priority remains a feature of the net. The trouble is that everybody wants precedence, so how do we decide who gets antecedence? If the answer is 'money', it quickly turns into an extortion scheme, since it invites the operators to limit their capacity and sell more priority at a premium. So what else can we do?
We all have some limit to the amount of data that we can send, although few of us ever reach that far. Nevertheless, that boundary is there and operators can and do monitor it. They can charge us for excess traffic. Now suppose your priority traffic would simply count double (or triple, etc.). We would be free to choose what traffic we want to run at whichever priority, but with consequences. Such a volume based reckoning is easily implemented between peering providers and there is no need to set up new billing schemes. Wouldn't that be an Internet way of doing things?
I work for a business VoIP company and have seen mixed experiences with fax over IP. Fax over G.711 codec (the highest quality uncompressed voice coder-decoder) CAN work but when you have any packet loss or dropped packets due to latency, the entire fax fails. You will literally see a blank page if anything at all. If you have Vonage's bandwidth saver turned on (G.729 compressed codec) you will never get it to work. Unless your service provider and the analog terminal adapter you have installed in your business both support T.38 fax protocol, you are never going to have a good faxing over IP experience.
Fax?!?
FAX?!?!?!?
OMG, That's just too funny to say anything else.
The primary reason that fax over VoIP does not work well is because of codec issues. Transcoding analog fax data to a compressed IP codec then back to analog is ugly.
I'm not sure what codec that Vonage uses but the only time I've ever seen fax over VoIP work is with the G.726 codec and even then it only worked about 75% of the time. T.38 is supposed to correct this but I haven't seen it in action yet as vendors are being very slow to deploy.
However, I do agree that the carriers do provide different tiers of service. Compare the "business" class cable service to the "residential" class cable service - even with same bandwidth limitations. The business class is significantly faster with no restrictions, while the residential class has all incoming ports blocked and is more "best-effort".
It's called setting up QoS on your router... We had the same problem with vonage, once QoS was setup (you can either do it by ehternet port, IP port number, mac address, etc etc if you have a decent router)... Try it, it'll prolly fix your problems. Most *good* VoIP to PBX boxes will connect between your router and cable modem, as to avoid the problem all together... Also I thought comcast setup QoS on their cable modems a while ago, maybe they just prioritize packets for their VoIP service (wouldn't be suprised).
Tier 6 is for non-Comcast voip packets.
On a curious side note, I have almost the same scenario as you do Robert. I have a standard Comcast account as I no longer run a business out of my home. But I still have a VOIP phone provided by Vonage that runs over that Comcast connection. I have no problem using my Fax machine over that connection. Although I agree with your premise, I found it interesting that you found your fax machine to be evidence. It's a stretch IMHO to do that. But let's face it, as a business owner it would be foolish of me to NOT prioritize my own services over someone else's when using my own services to provide them. I would expect my Comcast VOIP to work better than my Vonage VOIP when working on a Comcast connection. That's just common sense.
The only salient point you make is that DNS has precedence in "Internet" routing. You seem to forget that the "Internet" is not monolithic (excepting DNS), but is rather a network of various types of public and private networks. The largest traffic volumes are generated by the dominant ISPs, and though these dominant ISPs are owned in many cases by Common Carriers and subject to a modicum of regulation, they operate their IP networks as individual private networks that peer with other large private networks.
Intermingled on these enourmous private IP networks are many types of traffic, which are of necessity classified into different priority levels reflecting the various levels you mention. As an aside, in reality many of these private networks operate on two QoS levels -- real time or non-real time -- although they "sell" up to five prioritization levels to their gullible customers. Anyway, the point to all this is that "Internet" packet prioritization can be only as good as the *worst* prioritization schema existing in any ISP private network traversed by any given packet. And once a packet goes through a peering point, you have no idea what other peering points / private networks / ISPs it will go through before reaching its destination.
Sure, you can throw bandwidth at your quality problems, but that ultimately is constrained by other traffic on peering partners' networks, over which you have no control. That's why you can guarantee VoIP quality only within a privately-managed network, particularly on a carrier scale. Thus, you'll always get better service from a cable company's VoIP offering than from Vonage -- the cable co. manages QoS in its core.
OK, now the real point. In order to achieve Net neutrality, you have to regulate NEUTRAL PEERING! All peering entities must recognize and enforce prioritization levels marked on peered packets. Even if you had a "Net neutrality" rule that enforces equal quality of service within ISPs' networks, it would be largely meaningless without neutral peering.
As I think net neutrality is not what we have but what we want to have in the future. Even if it did not really existed we need to make it exist now.
Just my 2 cets. ;)
Also here you can find somewhat funny view on the net nutrality:
As I think net neutrality is not what we have but what we want to have in the future. Even if it did not really existed we need to make it exist now.
Just my 2 cents. ;)
Also here you can find somewhat funny view on the net nutrality:
Make sure your Vonage bandwidth saver in the Account Features is configured to maximum bandwidth.
No, no, no, no, no!
You don't quite understand what "Net Neutrality" means, and based this article off of a misunderstanding.
QoS, or giving some packets priority over others, has almost always been done. It is to be expected, because services are different.
What the ISPs want to do is not classify by ToS, such as VoIP, e-mail, etc. but by source or destination. They want to have Vonage pay more for THEIR VoIP bits, not VoIP bits in general.
The big problem is, Vonage already pays for service, just like you do. Why should they pay extra for priority?
QoS by ToS is a good, and necessary thing.
QoS by source or destination is pure greed and totally unfair.
Did a 2 second google, and this page seems pretty helpful:
http://www.savetz.com/fax/helpmechoose.php
Personally, I use efax to receive them via email for free when I need to receive faxes, and on the rare occasion I'm sending one, I use whatever workplace I'm in or do kinkos or something equivalent.
Hope this helps - interested in reading your response now that it seems the whole premise of the article may be incorrect.
Great column in general.
Did a 2 second google, and this page seems pretty helpful:
http://www.savetz.com/fax/helpmechoose.php
Personally, I use efax to receive them via email for free when I need to receive faxes, and on the rare occasion I'm sending one, I use whatever workplace I'm in or do kinkos or something equivalent.
Hope this helps - interested in reading your response now that it seems the whole premise of the article may be incorrect.
Great column in general.
The debate is not between "completely neutral, non prioritized" and "ISPs do whatever they wish."
The debate is about how to prevent anticompetive conduct while allowing for proper network management.
This is addressed in the pending Dorgan-Snowe network neutrality bill. It permits prioritization and other forms of network management. But it prohibits charging non-subscribers for prioritization, and prohibits ISPs from prioritizing packets based on soure, rather than application.
So, under Dorgan-Snowe, you can prioritize VOIP, provided you prioritize ALL VOIP, not just your own VOIP.
As an aside, while always legal for cable operators, the practices you describe were not legal for phone companies until the FCC deregulated them in 2005.
You can see more detail on this on my blog, Tales of the Sausage Factory, www.wetmachine.com/totsf. Specifically:
http://www.wetmachine.com/totsf/item/697 (analysis of Snowe Dorgan)
http://www.wetmachine.com/totsf/item/511 (Debunking Telco disinformation)
It is called efax. I've used it for more than 5 years. Unlike Vonage, it just works.
For more on Comcast see this article:
For more on Comcast see this article: ">http://www.chaosmanorreviews.com/open_archives/rh_20070412.php
It's been a few years now since I was involved in VoIP stuff, but if memory serves there is an H.323 standard for FAX and your endpoint equipment and carrier will have to support that if you are going to use a FAX machine on the line. I think it's Annex D of the H.323 spec. Basically, your Vonage gateway (the device that terminates the data portion of the call and converts to analog for your phone has act as if it was the analog modem of the FAX machine at the other end of the call and do all the handshaking, package up the data, send it to the gateway device at the other end of the digital portion of the call where the gateway at the other end is doing the same thing for the remote FAX machine, i.e. pretending to be your FAX machine's modem, and hand that data off to be converted to analog and sent along. All of this is happening in reverse at the same time. Without H.323 annex D, you'll be lucky to get 2400bps to work.
I have Lingo as well, and I found that I had to put my Lingo device into the router's DMZ in order to make the faxing work. I'm not sure that is still the case, but the rare times I needed to fax something I would set it in the DMZ. For receiving faxes, I signed up with J2 which offers free fax receiving (non-local area code, though). They offer paid plans as well. My faxes come in as a TIF file.
Guess I hit submit too quickly. If you google h.323 fax relay you can find lots of information on the required protocols, and maybe even point your Vonage techs in the right direction.
Oh, and about net neutrality - pretty much every router on the Internet has done packet prioritization from the beginning. Every version of Cisco's IOS I've ever used had one of Cisco's home-grown queuing schemes enabled by default, with plenty of other schemes optional. Generally, highly-interactive, time-sensitive traffic is prioritized ahead of the rest - the trick is how you identify that traffic and how you distribute available bandwidth between the traffic classes when you near or reach saturation. If you really wanted a simple FIFO-type queuing the option existed, but it was never the default and I doubt it's used much if at all out there in the real world. Routing almost always involves huge mismatches between available bitrates, and those mismatches were even worse ten or fifteen years ago when this stuff was still being worked out. FIFO is a disaster when you are routing between LAN and WAN bitrates - it just isn't done. Some kind of shaping has always been part of the algorithms. A large part of what made TCP/IP successful is how well it handles queuing, shaping and prioritization. Go back and read the very early RFCs and you will see the huge amount of work that was done on the slow-start, self-pacing, self-tuning aspects of the base protocols.
I have Comcast residential service, and a Vonage small business account with separate fax line. The fax works fine for me. My fax machine is an HP OfficeJet G85 all-in-one, and I was an early subscriber to Vonage so my VOIP interface was built by Motorola; I think they may be using Linksys interfaces now.
I think some of the other posters are probably correct in suggesting that latency is more likely to be a problem than bandwidth.
I have been a Vonage customer for about 3 years and
have used my Vonage line to send many faxes. Have you tried to just send the faxes on your Vonage voice line? I know they say it should not work, but
it seems to. I have not tried to receive faxes, so I
do not know if that works. I use eFax to get the
inbound faxes. I also have used the Vonage voice line to connect my IBM iSeries(AS400) to my customers
iSeries at 9600 bps Bysnc and have not had any problem.
My ISP is Road Runner and my upload is a little
under a half a megabit.
Net neutrality was a myth when I realized that I had to pay more to get faster internet which was the only way to make some of the staples of Internet-based services, such as YouTube, viable.
Dial-up, which was/is available to me on a complimentary basis, is insufficient to run the Web as easily, smoothly, conveniently, or usefully as Internet for which I have to pay.
Indeed: I have to buy into a higher level of service in order to access what many take for granted.
From the trend in these comments it is becoming clear to me that people aren't getting my point. It isn't a protocol issue. I have tried EVERY protocol and EVERY setting.
I used my Vonage fax line without fail for three years and hundreds of faxes then suddenly it stopped working. My ISP was the same, modem was the same, router was the same, network was the same, analog adapter was the same, and fax machine was the same. What happened? Vonage has been working with me and certainly has no reason to not want my fax to work. The only thing that could have changed is at my ISP's policies, which was my point.
Bob
have you tried another fax machine?
I guess I should have read the comments before I posted. Anyway - it's very unlikely to be a change in the prioritization by your provided, Bob. If faxing worked at all on your line, then Vonage must have had the relevant support options turned on at your gateway, and if FAX relay is working, it makes FAX traffic less time-sensitive and less subject to the vagaries of Internet delivery times and reliability. They've simply messed up your provisioning, or you have a failed piece of equipment or something.
Hmmm, I have vonage and comcast. I guess that fax I sent this morning via my vonage line didn't get there. I guess my accountant and I didn't really discuss the document I must not have sent to her.
Huh? Read the proposed Net Neutrality bills. The idea is to say "You can prioritize VOIP, but you have to prioritize all VOIP, not just your own, etc. I guess it depends on how you define Neutrality, but I would say what you describe is very Neutral, unless they're targeting Vonage specifically.
What, you thought packet priority was just added for sh**s and giggles?
Seeing similar problems to yours when using a Cavalier(Verizon I think) T1 backed VOIP business line. When we try to dial up some older machines via 56K modem we find that connections are intermittant. If we dumb the connection speed down then we connect more frequently but at a much slower pace. Its causing all kinds of headaches for us to the extent that we may lose some of the savings inherent in VOIP in order to have a single landline put in to support these dial up requirements.
I have a vongage second line at home with Bellsouth Residential DSL "extreme" and just 2 days ago I was trying to send a fax using the vonage line becuase it was the nearest "dial tone" to my all-in-one printer/fax. After 8-10 failed attempts, I got a really long phone cord and faxed using my regular phone line. Worked like a champ...
I am going to dig deeper in to this vonage/fax problem
I have a vonage second line at home with Bellsouth Residential DSL "extreme" and just 2 days ago I was trying to send a fax using the vonage line because it was the nearest "dial tone" to my all-in-one printer/fax. After 8-10 failed attempts, I got a really long phone cord and faxed using my regular phone line. Worked like a champ...
I am going to dig deeper in to this vonage/fax problem
Bob,
I used to have Vonage when I had Cablemodem service, so I am familiar with the problem you are seeing. The issue is more likely caused by the modulation of the FAX signal within the compressed VoIP CODEC than with QoS. I found it helped to hook up FAX, Modems, and other ITU spec devices through a DSL line filter connected into the back of the Vonage MTU (using the voice line side of the filter). You will also want to make sure you are using the mid-quality setting on your Vonage service (I believe it was the 50kbps stream setting).
It is not perfect, but it will often support FAX at 14.4 kbps and V.90 modems at 28.8 kbps.
Thank you for the info though, I was not aware of the tiers within the ISP delivery systems.
This is already getting worse, and will end badly: we're already seeing trouble on my little corner of the Comcast network.
I have a small business fixing home PCs in Delaware. I use Comcast residential for my home Internet access, and many of my customers do too.
Lately, the speed of this service -- as measured through Speakeasy -- has dropped precipitously. At my home, the average download speed had been about 1.2 Mb/s for three years, and it recently started dropping closer to 800 Kb/s. My customers have seen similar changes. I had a customer lately who couldn't break 500K... and Comcast's support "techs" had told him the problem was his PC.
The likely cause? Comcast is pushing their "Triple Play" service (phone, Internet and TV), and is probably prioritizing their own VoIP packets to cut down on quality complaints. They've been selling way too many of those deals, and all their Internet customers are paying the price.
Our only (slim) hope: Complain. Everybody check your speeds, and complain when they don't meet the marketing. Open a ticket every week for slow connections, and don't take "no problem" for an answer.
In our neighborhood, so many people scheduled service calls that they finally upgraded something significant: my home download speed jumped to 4 MB/s and stayed there. :-)
I am a network architect by profession. In most networks, quality of service designations don't even come into play until there is a network restriction someplace. Only then to priorities matter and in that case, you might well want them to.
For example: Lets say you have an internet connection into your house that allows 1 Mb/sec of traffic download. Well, if you are just browsing the web and talking on a viop phone, you might only be using half of that. So it doesnt matter what priority the packets are because there is still plenty of room in the "pipe" for them. They are just tossed down the pipe as they arrive. QoS doesn't "penalize" packets when there is plenty of bandwidth available. Your provider won't do anything to intentionally slow down a packet because it has a lower priority.
Now things change once that pipe gets full. Lets say Junior gets on his computer and starts a download of a music video that fills your pipe. Now your phone conversation starts to cut out and might drop completely. What QoS allows them to do is "reserve" a certain amount of bandwidth for certain aplications OR to prioritize them. What this means if they put VOIP at higher priority is that when your connection gets close to maximum bandwidth and a new packet arrives, they take a look at it. If it is a VOIP packet, they will send it but if it is a streaming video packet, it will have to wait and go next. So this prevents one low priority service from interfering with a higher priority service when resources are limited.
You don't want Junior's file download to interfere with your phone call so you set it so VOIP packets are always routed first and other serives are handled in order according to their priority.
I can tell you what the real issue is with net neutrality but it would take a lot more space than I want in this comment.
Seconding Ken's observation. I've *done* this programming back in the late 90s, and the fax protocol is very very twitchy about interruptions and corruption from being run through a codec that doesn't take fax tones into account. "Best service" fails miserably for fax-over-IP delivery unless you play some serious timing/spoofing games with the remote machines. (latency is *bad* for vanilla fax)
Unless Vonage is using g711 and the planets are correctly aligned you are bound to have trouble sending/receiving faxes over VOIP.
You'll find more details here:
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+fax
BTW, why are you using Vonage and not Asterisk? Certainly anyone who set up a mythtv server in his minivan isn't afraid of rolling his own VOIP? ;-).
Sorry to hear about your faxing issues. I have been able to successfully fax through Vonage on both Comcast residential broadband cable and Verizon FIOS without a single failure. I have Vonage call quality set to the maximum. I have faxed using WinFax and MS's built in Fax app. I fax from my PC by connecting the RJ11 phone cable directly into the Vonage cisco ATA phone port, no other phone extensions active. I don't have a stand alone fax machine. I run a custom firmware WRT54GS router that supports QOS. I have set VOIP/DNS as a priority and all else as bulk.
I switched from Comcast's cable broadband 4mbps/384kbps ($46.99 + $3.00 + TAX cable modem monthly rental @ multi-product discount prices) to Verizon’s Fios 5mbps/2mbps service ($39.99 + TAX) in February. Here are my test results in kbps from Speakeasy.
Comcast AVERAGED d/2757.5 u/261.625 (WRT54GS)
Verizon AVERAGED d/5068.5 u/977.625 (Verizon's Router)
Verizon AVERAGED d/5523.5 u/1255.875 (WRT54GS)
I hope you have a choice in ISPs, maybe switching would resolve your problem? Good luck.
Bob, reading this article and then your comment about readers not getting the point strikes me as funny. What did you expect from your readers? We are mostly techies and of course we believe there is a solution to any problem and we want to help you find it. It reminds me of coming home from work and listening to my wife recount the days activities and I immediately try to "help" when all she really wants if for me to listen. Your larger point is well taken.
I can tell you that I finally found a second/third level technician at Vonage that was able to help me adjust the settings on my HP 7410 "All in one" to get it to work over Vonage/Comcast cable modem. I do not have his name, number, nor even all of the instructions he provided, but it involved modifying settings in the HP engineering menu. It can be fixed, you can fax. Just get the right tech to help you.
Bob,
I expect that there is little or no connection between your trouble with Fax-over-IP (FOIP?) and your ISPs traffic management scheme. Perhaps a little more/less latency helps/hinders...but G711 alone isn't enough. Fax-over-VOIP is essentially doomed unless you can ensure that the end-points use the T.38 protocol which is specifically designed to ensure fax works over voip.
Some people report some measure of success using the G.711 codec, but that's generally not the case.
Further, many devices over the past few years have claimed to be T.38 capable...but their implementation was faulty or incomplete. The protocol is not well understood.
As a SOHO VOIP user for the past 6 years I can tell you that fax-over-VOIP is not worth the trouble. Subscribe to a fax-to-email gateway and get back to business.
Oh yeah...one other thing....when you tire of Vonage, or they go under, or morph into something else....try Nuvio. They don't have end users directly. Their service is resold by several providers, mine is www.carolinanet.com. I use them as the primary ITSP for my home office and could not be happier.
Every post on this thread is missing the BIG STORY!
"I used to work at Time-Warner Cable's Road Runner High Speed HQ," wrote one reader, "and as of 2005, TWC marked all VoIP packets with the TOS bit turned to 1. TWC has 5 levels of priority, VoIP having the highest, router tables second, commercial services 3rd, Road Runner consumer 4th and everything else is classified as 'best effort'."
Wow!
Wow indeed. TW has figured out how to encode 5 VALUES INTO A SINGLE BIT!!!
Or maybe..er..they're using them super-secret QUANTUM THINGIES!! Dang, we better look into this before the Russkies beat us to it, by crackie..
Sorry, I just can't resist this stuff.
Use linux.....
OpenH323 provides a G.711 codec.
http://www.openh323.org/
Faxing over VoIP to the PSTN is complicated even on a corporate LAN where the administrators have complete control over the environment, and doubly so over a WAN. The density of the data, compared to a plain old voice call, usually results in a greater-than-expected quantity of very large packets getting put on the wire. Without QoS and good fax-aware protocol, your chances of getting a successful fax call through are about nil.
Robert.
Your fax woes are probably related to it's historic use of the connection oriented T30 protocol which is very intolerant of timing delays/latency over 20ms and was designed to work over the public switched telephone network(PSTN) dominated by the precise clocking of the fully dedicated T1 links...circa late 1950's.
A possible workaround is the utilization of the G.711 codec end to end... but this MAY work 50 percent of time...if at all.
I doubt your ISP SLA can even realistically claim such guarantees over the best effort connectionless oriented public internet.
Your ISP spent how many hours on this issue and you pay how much for this "fax" line? :)
Regards,
Nicholas Kovats
Toronto
Robert.
I just caught your comment regarding your previous uninterrupted 3 years of fax service.
I suspect that they had been "routing" your fax transmissions over the regular POTS system until recently.
A question of economics I suspect and perhaps some good old fashioned monopolistic POTS telecom hardball.
My 2 cents...
Nicholas Kovats
Toronto
Bob -
I have a Teletype model 32 TWIX sitting in my living room...just in case you need to consider another alternative...
Bob, if you get NerdTV Season 2 out it'll fix your fax problem.
You should consider getting A FIOS businees line. Qos is a whole lot better, and you get the speeds you pay for. I dont know where your located but its worth looking into.
You said the audio quality on your VOIP line wasn't great. Fax machines communicate with screeches, squeaks and squeals. Poor audio quality = no fax, right?
Trying to do analog FOIP is an exercise in futility. Read the attached link to find out why you are wasting your time trying. http://www.soft-switch.org/foip.html
Fax simply doesn't work reliably over VoIP. Instead of trying to find some nefarious conspiratorial cabal that is suppressing your privileges, do a little real research for a change. I often find your articles quite insightful, but this one doesn't pass muster.
By the way, look up T.38 or T.37 for reliable fax over IP solutions.
Bob, I'm one of the last of a breed, running a 56k modem dialup network and actually making real money at it. Forget about Fax over VoIP. And forget about your "best effort" theory. In fact, I can tell you first hand to forget about 56k modem connections over VoIP, they just won't work. However, I'll qualify this, I'm talking about companies like Vonage who don't own the network you are on, where their VoIP switch is not sitting in the same IP class. I'd assume your cable provider offers their own VoIP product and if so, I'd bet their switch is directly on their network, allowing your calls to terminate directly onto the PSTN from their switch. In that case, your fax and modem connections (if any) will work as they should. It's all in the ra-bit signaling of the PSTN and lack-there-of with your current VoIP services that is causing your fax to fail. Dump Vonage, get a "real" VoIP product where their switch is at least within the same 'B' IP class, and you'll see this net neutrality theory of your's has very little to do with failed faxes.
The problem is in the analog to digital conversion. Ok, let's review what happens when you try to use a modem (which is of course what a fax machine is at heart) over a VOIP connection. The fax machine's modem MOdulates a digital signal onto an analog carrier. This wave form is then sampled by the the Vonage AD converter, packetized, and sent over the IP network. At Vonage's equivalent of a CO, the packets are converted back into an analog signal via a D to A converter. The analog waveform that is generated is not the same one you created, and is in fact missing pieces as a result of sampling. The analog signal travels across the PSTN from the Vonage CO, where it is again, in all likelihood, digitized, transported, and re-converted to an analog signal before it reaches the other end.
The problem is this: modems can readily accommodate their digital to analog conversions, and the ones that occur on the PSTN, they cannot handle the additional A/DA conversion of VOIP. In fact, even the phone company's A/D/A conversion will KO 56k speeds; you will never get a full 56K to any destination that does not terminate your call with a digital phone line (ISDN/PRI).
Further complicating this is that Vonage and the PSTN may not be using the same codec. Make sure that your Vonage connection is using g.711 µ-law.
Bob,
I think you should take up Shannon's offer to fix your fax problem. There are many of us, myself included, who would like to see NerdTV season 2.
The initial interviews were the most informative videos that I have seen on the internet. Why don't you ask your viewers for an up-front fee? Quality is never free. Your access to these folks and the skills you bring to the interviews is significant and should not be undervalued.
Martin Kalman
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/Ou/?p=470
Cringely doesn’t need no stinking facts to push Net Neutrality. There are actually $5/month services that permit unlimited inbound facsimiles in his email inbox which can be printed from any laser printer so Cringely is essentially ramming his head against the wall trying unsuccessfully to get his second Vonage line (presumably at $35/month) to receive a single fax. If he had to have his own traditional fax machine working, T.38 would be a minimum requirement for basic medium-speed fax capability. Cringely's lack of a T.38 capability ATA (Analog Telephony Adapter) is the real reason behind his problems but it's just too convenient an excuse for him to slam the Carriers with his extremist Net Neutrality agenda.
Am I a traitor for switching to Maxemail? One of the Email to Fax - Fax to Email services? It has worked for years never has a busy signal or runs out of paper, and is accessible when I am on the road. For me it costs less than a ream of paper per month. Outgoing faxes are scanned and sent out as email. Incoming are reviewed and only printed if needed. The electronic copy is kept on a server and isn't ever lost in the pile on my desk.
I have the same problem with my fax line on Shaw in Nelson, BC, Canada. I find i often have to refax over and over before a few pages will through. This is odd considering my line quality is good though has a slight almost undetectable echo. If anything i believe this echo on Vonage lines is causing the problem with my fax machine, once i switched it to overseas mode i saw a lot more first try success.
Bob, I have a similar Vonage package with a similar Time Warner package, and I don't have any trouble at all with the fax line. The specs you stated are the same I bought from TWC. I would assume that Comcast and TWC have the same tiers here in NC, especially since TWC recently assumed responsibility for Comcast ops in most of the state.
And BTW, George, my Vonage fax line was complimentarily included with the Vonage Business package, and costs nothing extra. Bob probably has a similar deal. Also, all I am using is an all-in-one HP Officejet for a fax machine. If Bob is running cheaper than me I would be surprised.
Bob,
I use this service for sending out faxes. It is free, but you are limited.
As for inbound faxes... I use the free eFax service.
Bob,
As many of the other comments state, doing analog fax over a VoIP network is often problematic. Some fax machine vendors specifically state that they do not support customers who use VoIP. The fact that your set up used to work means that you were lucky. I often hear about large enterprises who switch to VoIP for their internal phone networks, only to find that all of their analog fax machines stop working.
I suggest that you contact the manufacturer of your fax modem, describe your problem, and inquire if there are any timing windows that can be changed on their product to make it work better over a VoIP network. Sometimes this helps.
It seems you are running into a situation we used to see many years ago with dialup lines (back in the mid 90s). Some of our out of town customers would use a discount long distance service for some of their lines and if you tried to send a fax or connect two modems together using these lines you would get lousy connections if you managed anything at all. After working with the tech support for both the long distance company and various others we found out that way these companies managed their cheap rates was by splitting connections and the modems (fax or otherwise) hated.
I am usually surprised when faxes etc work properly on a VOIP circuit. It is counter intuitive that they would work well.
I am intrigued by the focus on the fax issues in the comments. Perhaps it is because many people were already aware of the "tiered service". I was, but I worked as a network administrator for Class A networks for a number of years. I was actually a troubleshooter for hire. Changing packet priorities based on content has been in practice since the 1980s at least. The reality is, as you mention in your article, networks will not work without it. As you have mentioned before a few services chew through essentially all the bandwidth. Which services those are changes with the winds of techno-chic, but it is always the same story. From a network viewpoint, it does not matter what the service is. It's just data that needs to be routed. Changing the heuristics of the network to ensure that the data is routed without causing too much interference to other data is what network admins do. Changing priority on certain packet types is one of the tools they use to do it. You are correct when you say that you (and everyone else) do not want them to stop doing it. What the businesses are looking for is permission to charge for it. If they get that permission, market experience tells me that rather than your prices going down, Googles prices will go up. It may be unclear how that effects the average Internet consumer. Just ask where Google will get that money? From their customers, who advertise through Google. Those advertiser will get that money by raising prices on their goods and services. So what we will get as consumers is limited or no improvement in our Internet experience, and higher prices.
That is why Net Neutrality matters.
Pat O
I don't know enough of the technical details of VoIP, but I am surprised that a smart-seeming company like Vonage would even think of attempting to translate the FAX transmission protocol into IP packets. Simply capture the FAX at the earliest possible point in the stream, convert to PDF, send to email. Done. A quick check reveals that efax.com and 100 other companies can provide this, for around $10 a month. Vonage needs to get with the program.
Is there a service that tests latency similar to a SpeakEasy SpeedTest?
Bonus points for whomever properly illustrates all of the AD/DA conversions, codec changes, and levels of IP encapsulation (don't forget the long distance carriers' own VoIP) happening to Bob's fax. I started but got a brain cramp from all the layers.
I think that you have totally misunderstood the problem here:
Running fax over VoIP is essentially running an d/a emulation (9600 data over voice) atop an a/d emulation (voice over IP).
So it's not a question of IP QoS, it's simply that VoIP analog-to-digital translation is tuned for VOICE and is probably using lossy compression which destroys any chance of using it for data transmission.
My office's Cisco VoIP system has analog adapters that are supposed to explicitly support fax and modems (up to 28.8) but, when we bypassed them and installed dedicated analog POTS lines, our incoming fax server logged a 50% reduction in dropped faxes. So even VoIP that is tuned for data still has major probs, much less 'retail' voice-only VoIP.
Your analysis seems sound to me. It is the only way I can think of that that the Comcast's and Time Warner's can make money AND peacefully co-exist with Netflix and Apple iTunes movie and TV downloads whe they arrive. These new ventures threaten the very essence of the cable TV cash cow.
What. we thought they were kjust going to let us drop our cable TV service and start downloading movies from Apple? This is all about maintaining the sam revenue stream from customers with or without cable Tv subscriptions. They are positioning themselves to compete with, and even crush, the coming competition...
Bob.
1) Did your Vonage FAX Line ever work?
2) Vonage advertises a FAX quality line port on their adapters which can be activated for an additional fee. Is one of your line ports configured as a FAX port by Vonage?
3) The Modem in your FAX uses quadrature amplitude modulation a technique which is very sensitive to jitter. If the circuit between your FAX machine and the distant FAX machine is subject to excessive jitter it will be very difficult if not impossible for the local FAX Modem and distant FAX Modem to Synchronize.
4) In 1986 Bellsouth implemented a new type of Subscriber Line Carrier System to serve the office I worked in. Any 212 type modem connected through the new Subscriber Line Carrier System could not connect to a distant 212 type modem. Bellsouth quickly connected our lines back through the original circuits until the manufacture could redesign the Subscriber Line Carrier System. For voice calls one could not tell that there was any problem. The reason for the inability for the modems to connect was determined to be excessive jitter in the Subscriber Line Carrier System.
5)Please review this article which is on Microsoft TechNet website: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/intwork/indc_atm_rzys.mspx?mfr=true The article describes the QoS levels and their application. Please note the CBR QoS.
6) Does Vonage have a test number to test the connection through the Internet for excessive jitter? To resolve your problem Vonage should work with you to determine the transmission impairment that affect your FAX Line. Regards
What Vonage really needs is to stop dorking around and partner with a scanner maker to market a VOIP Digital fax machine that essentially functions as a scanner that scans documents, then digitally transfers the files over the VOIP setup to another similarly outfitted VOIP or land line multi mode-ed fax machine.
Think dual/triple mode-ed fax machines connected to the LAN, and Land Line, which also happens to have a specific email address, and IP Address, that allows anyone to send documents, and pic files (any and all digital files really), that can also handle normal faxing.
For crying out loud it's 2007, not the dark ages.
Let's get with the program Vonage!
And oh yeah, I want my percentage Vonage et al.
Is it time to start talking seriously about a national backbone - fiber to the curb owned by state and local governments? Isn't the information highway as important as the interstate highway system or, for that matter, the water supply or the sewage system?
As a Libertarian, I abhor government involvement in anything that can be provided in the private sector, but in the case of international, high speed, data trafficking, the private sector doesn't seem capable of delivering the unified, super high speed data pipe necessary to propel the free citizens of United States into new millennium. Their interests simply don't align with ours. Providing nearly unlimited bandwidth to every citizen for the same price as the average garbage removal bill doesn't seem in the cards. It's so frustrating to see clearly the possibilities and potential of a truly free market for date content and services, yet, at the same time know that under the present oligopolistic system, it will probably never happen - at least in my life time. The technology is at hand. What are we waiting for? Third world countries are already passing the U.S. in terms of availability, cost, and access to high speed data services and content. You could almost make an argument that it's quite literally a matter of national security.
Mind you, I'm not talking about services here. I'm only talking about the pipeline - the conduit. Services would stay in the private sector. Every citizen, service, and content provider would be given equal access to "attach" to the national pipeline and compete to provide the best, most compelling services.
Wait a minute, forget about running fiber. It could be even easier. Simply take back the broadcast bandwidth federally allocated to the major TV networks and convert it all to a national wireless pipe. The "major" networks could then "attach" to the same broadband wireless network as the rest of us and compete with other content providers (like YouTube or Your Home Page) for our ears and eye balls. CBS would scream, but who really cares? Do we really need a small number of federally protected broadcast TV providers any more?
I'd like to add a note about your bandwith tests.
I have found that both my ISP's, and speedtest.net's bandwidth testers report different line speeds depending on the browser I use, (IE, firefox) and the OS I am running! (Gentoo/Win2k/XP).
For example, my tests report over 5Mb/s up & down when using my Gentoo laptop with firefox, but when using FF on win2k the numbers come up at only 3Mb/s up & down. Finally, if I use IE6 on the 2k machine, I lose about 200Kb/s off the readings.
And wierder still, the above figures are what my ISP's own tester reports. If I use speedtest.net, the linux results are comparable, but on windows, my upstream drops to 1.5 Mb/s.
At this point, I have lost faith in online bandwidth testers, and I posit that you will too, if you perform these tests yourself.
In fact, for comparison, I just ran the speakeasy tests, and my numbers were as follows:
FFox on Gentoo: 5366kb/s dn 1018kb/s up
FFox on Win2k: 3183kb/s dn 691kb/s up
IE6 on Win2k: 3102kb/s dn 452kb/s up
These were all tested to the Seattle server, in the order listed, within minutes of each other.
Maybe there is a lot more fiction in bandwidth tests than previously thought.
Oh, and for reference, the contracted rate from my ISP is "Symmetric 3Mb/s"
It is worth noting too, that all three bandwidth testers are based on the Ookla Net Metrics interface, so maybe this is related to a bug in their code.
At any rate, perhaps you (cringely) should test these disparate environments as allowed by your home network, and see the differences.
FAX services, like TDD/TTY services, don't work over digital lines AT ALL. I have to use a special TTY for use with digital services. At work, we have to keep some analog lines for our FAX services (all the rest are VOIP)
Lots of techies out here who have it working in our offices inclined to help you out here in true internet spirit.
You've already concluded that it can't possibly be your bandwidth, then you go on and insist that it must be QOS of your bandwidth. Try looking for a different problem and possibly fixing that.
You didn't explain how you managed to plug an RJ45 network cable into the fax machine's smaller RJ11 phone jack. You might want to check that.
Also, then the CODEC's used by your VOIP system. Perhaps some codecs work best with voice, others best with faxes? You might get a second phone number for fax and use specific CODEC over specific route to fax machine?
CODEC's might be a good subject for a couple of articles too.
Another subject would be connections between VOIP systems and POTS systems -- especially the economics of doing so.
BTW, Comment header above says br and p tags not necessary, but comment preview below shows multiple paragraphs all running together -- don't know if will look differently after I click submit.
Kirk B.
I always thought fax was analog. How does the analog fax transmission get converted to packets? I must be missing something here.
This net neutrality business is certainly coming to a head. Two comments specifically about fax-over-VOIP:
(1) "I can sit here with 100+ times enough bandwidth for fax service" -- fax will take more than 9600 bps because the data being transmitted over your VOIP connection is compressed digital samples of the analog waveform corresponding to 9600 bps data. The digital representation of the analog waveform created by the modem takes an order of magnitude more bandwidth than the digital fax data stream (90 kbps to encode 9.6 kbps of data).
(2) I had a similar problem with fax on a Vonage line. Vonage changed the sample size on my VOIP adapter and this cleared up the problem. Fax-over-VOIP also seems to be very sensitive to changes in line latency.
If I may suggest, while this is an outstanding comment on line speed, there is also a broader view that can be taken. See http://thechewedend.blogspot.com/2007/04/dsl-and-phone-company.html for further comment on why DSL may be the way to go for the forseeable future. And why, for any type line, you need to evaluate the service.
Fax over VOIP, I’m actually surprised Vonage allows this in the first place. I currently use SunRocket's VOIP service ($200 per year); Last time I checked SunRocket specifically forbids Fax and Modem usage over their service. For reliable voice communications they claim to require a minimum of 128 kbps upside. My cable internet provider was only providing 256 kbps up until earlier this year. This made the upside very choppy, so much so it was almost impossible to use touch tone services like my voice mail at work.
I understand that the 128 kbps upside was probably overstated in an attempt to ensure enough bandwidth to help eliminate the choppiness, from network lag-time, but it still happens. After all the telco's are able to do full quality voice over 64 kbps ISDN lines. But then again that is a dedicated allocation of bits rather than packets between routers on the Internet.
When the service works it works well, but when it doesn’t it can be worse than using a cell phone in a fringe area. My first year is almost up, I’m planning to upgrade my cable service to Fiber, that includes dedicated phone service, I guess I need to decide if I need to cancel or keep the existing VOIP services or not.
Exo
I should be so lucky.
I use Sunrocket and Wide Open West. I have no problem getting faxes. Too bad I don't want them. Apparently my number used to be a business. And whatever business it was regularly got faxes at 2AM.
It is like original sin: the damage was done before we were born...long before...............................
However we missed "making our A's' we can make our "Gentleman's "C's" and win the day.
Internet experience and actualities have materialized to the point where most of us can gras it and make corrections.......................
Tiered service is only one concept... there are many things most commonsense, fairplay, equalrights Americans would HATE....unconstitutional and illegal, as soon as the behaviors are brought to work in the mainstream........................
If we are truly American, we should actively campaign for a cleaner fairer time of it.
VERY actively, since errors buried deep will need digging out to fix........................
What do we do?
My little art gallery is patriotic but gentil, and
little effected by whatever goes on for the bigger fellas.....except for the air.....it gets fetid from such errors left unfixed........................
I am not a cynic, but a believer, and when it reaches my desk, I stand up nicely, but that's all
I can do........................
I would like more reading with fact and even graphics that I could post and share at my tech page...and remain objective and believing in the power to win. I signed the net neutrality thing at eBay, and I will more, as is sane, when approached........................
Truly
.......................
elle
ellefagan.com.......................
2007 Artisan from Connecticut
White House State Easter Egg Display.......................
Correction: I re-read the information at sunrocket's site, they now claim to support and allow faxing using their service.
I ordered my fiber without phone service for now. I will wait and see if my service improves with the increased bandwidth on the new connection.
Exo
Due to the fluid nature of the web, we can't guarantee these links will work past the original posting date.
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I'll think you find it is a protocol interference between voip and your fax. Many voip providers here in Australia do not support fax over voip, instead the offer fax to email gateways and fax out gateways.