Fax Over IP

Fax is the transfer of data by dialing a phone number traditionally and transmitting the data electronically. So when you fax data, you have to dial a phone number and pay the charges for the time elapsed during which the data is sent through the fax. Now a days, fax can also be sent over the internet without paying anything for the task. FoIP is an acronym for Fax over Internet Protocol. You can even send fax over long distances by using FoIP, which saves you a lot of money.When you use FoIP, you send the data using internet in place of your phone. In this case, you just pay for using the internet connection. No separate charge is occurred for sending the fax data. You just pay for the internet connection and send pages and pages of fax data through internet. Fax machines usually convert printed data on the paper into voice signals and transmit it through the telephone line. This is received on the other side and converted back into printed data. Unlike this, FoIP transmits separate data packets over the internet. FoIP technology also requires less bandwidth than usual services.

As the number of mobile phones having internet connection is increasing these days, so is the usage of sending fax over FoIP. Fax by using FoIP enables to send and receive data quickly. Hard copies of agreements can be obtained by businessmen. Since the prospect of FoIP is new, certain guidelines are to be followed in introducing it. Standards formalized by the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) should be used. ITU has two standards for addressing FoIP: a) T.37 which delivers the fax as an email attachment, and b) T.38 which defines protocol are definition of fax over IP. T.37 will not give immediate confirmation of delivery of fax.

To meet the protocols for transmitting fax data over PSTN lines, a new standard called T.30 was developed initially, which was later modified into T.38. T.38 performs data exchange with T.30 to determine the line quality on a PSTN network. Gateways using T.38 indicate only whether they have succeeded or failed in the detection of the tone. Finally, the two gateways only transmit pages intended for delivery.

So, finally we can see that the importance of fax over IP has increased in recent years. People have started to realize that this is fast and cost effective. More research is being done to find faster fax transfer protocols. New techniques for converting data to voice and back are also being developed. So we can just say that all this portends well for FoIP and we can look forward to it in the future.