12-22-2010 07:01 PM - edited 03-12-2019 09:34 AM
David Hanes is an engineer for the Cisco Customer Advanced Engineering (CAE) group supporting various emerging technologies through product testing and field trials. He is a technical expert in the area of fax over IP technologies and assists with network design and troubleshooting for critical fax over IP deployments. Since joining Cisco in 1997, he has worked as a Technical Assistance Center (TAC) engineer for the WAN, WAN Switching, and Multiservice Voice teams, a team lead for the Multiservice Voice team, and an Escalation Engineer covering a variety of voice and fax technologies.
Hanes is the coauthor of "Fax, Modem, and Text for IP Telephony" from Cisco Press. He holds CCIE certification #3491.
This document contains the anwers provided for the questions asked during the live "Ask the Expert" Webcast session on the Topic - T.38 Fax over IP Design and Best Practises.
The series of Ask The Expert session is available in the Ask The Expert section of Cisco Support Community.
The Complete Recording of this live Webcast can be accessed here.
A. For any SCCP controlled analog gateway, the only method available for T.38 is an NSE-based switchover. Protocol-based switchover or standards-based switchover to T.38 is not supported with SCCP controlled endpoints
A. No real functional advantages to one or the other for T.38. Both support NSE or protocol-based switchover. SCCP controlled devices have some restrictions.
A. No, not at this time. It's not being considered but can be if there is a business case presented to the Business Unit. This is probably best addressed through your account team.
A. Once IOS is upgraded, it still supports the Version 0 and you to need configure T.38 v3. The system is not going to turn on v3 automatically. v3 is definetly not supported in MGCP and SCCP. It's supported on H323 and SIP.
A. Yes. High-speed and/or low-speed redundancy requires more bandwidth. Configuring level 2 redundancy for the high-speed data essentially doubles the bandwidth for a FoIP call.
A. Only H323 and SIP supports T.38 v3.
Q. Fax over IP (FoIP) is generally more affected by packet loss than VoIP. True or False
A. True. Mainly because even moderate packet loss with fax can cause scan line errors and a call to disconnect. Many voice codecs can utilize prediction algorithms to conceal for missed samples (at the same bandwidth), but T.38 requires redundancy (implying higher bandwidth usage) to be enabled to cope.
Q. Is there a dream fax configuration which can be configured on H323 gateways which works consistantly with different third party fax mechines.. ?
A. Basically standards-based T.38 fax on H323 or SIP voice gateways should work with the different third party fax servers and machines. However there may be some changes required depending upon the type of third party fax server and different software versions running.
A. T.37 is still supported in the latest version of IOS. There are no plans to remove support at this time.
A. For T.38, as discussed by David, it is 1000ms. For voice, it's 150ms.
A. NSE based switchover is the default for MGCP. The cli "no mgcp fax t38 inhibit" is need, but again, should be the default. To configure protocol-based T.38, the following are needed: mgcp package-capability fxr-package and mgcp default-package fxr-package.
A. Yes, support for SG3 for T.38 is supported with the new LSI-based DSPs. SG3 is possible with passthrough as well.
Q. What is the difference between T.37 and T.38 ?
A. T.37 is store and forward faxing. The gateway accepts a fax call on the TDM side, converts it to an email and forwards it to an email server. T.38 is real time faxing over IP. Typically, the gateway doesn't participate in the fax call, and only relays it to another gateway or fax server.
A. Yes, the fax implementation on the UC500 is similar to that of a voice gateway. It is typically much easier as the fax machine is connected to the same gateway as the PSTN connection.
Q. Can you use a SCCP gateway (VG248) with MGCP PSTN gateway and use both methods (Standards-based T38 and NSE-based T38) at same time?
A. No, both switch over methods are not possible at the same time for T.38. On the VG248, only one option is possible.
A. Store and Forward or T.37 uses a script on the voice gateway to convert an inbound fax, from the PSTN, to a email with a TIFF attachment which it then forwards to an SMTP server which then sends to the end user as an email. "Real-Time" FOIP communicates between two Fax machines/devices and doesn't perform the conversion to an email/TIFF.
A. Basically you have MGCP configured GW and then you have SCCP Gateway doing Passthrough with Fax server and have mix of this configuration aswell. When calls comes in Mgcp Gateway and SCCP GW VG224 negotiates Passthrough and terminates the call on fax server. VG224 has analog fax machine connected to specific port, change the port from SCCP control to use H323 / SIP and you can have T.38 for fallback or Passthrough.
Best solution would be change the Skinny control port (SCCP) to H323/SIP control port.
A. Packet loss is controlled by the Network, so a proper QoS policy between the gateway and fax server is needed and properly prioritizing FoIP traffic.
A. Yes, there are different alternative solutions available doing T.38 support by Third party vendors.
Q. I have a third party fax server that talks standards-based T38, is it possible to get a fax machine attached to a SCCP VG224 to connect to this fax server?
A. No, it will not be possible with SCCP controlled VG224. You'll need to convert the VG224 to MGCP, SIP or H.323 to get protocol/standards based T.38 switchover to work.
Q. What about the ATA186 and T.38
A. ATA 186 only supports Passthrough. New models of ATA relased this year (ATA187) has T.38 support and Voice GW VG224 also offers support for T.38. ATA187 does suppport T.38 but ATA 186 doesn't support T.38.
A. It dictates the switchover method: “Fax Passthrough” can refers to the more specific passthrough transport method using an NSE switchover to pass faxes over G.711. “Fax pass-through” details a switchover to passthrough using the call control protocol.
A. No plans at this time.
A. An archive will be available for viewing by November 19, 2010. For additional detail or if you have questions after this session concludes, please visit https://supportforums.cisco.com/community/netpro/ask-the-expert for more information.
A. Yes, T.38 and Passthrough are triggered off of different tones. Both can be enabled and depending on the source, will be triggered.
A. No, but this presentation can be used as a reference. There really is no other options needed for the configuration to work. For more information, http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/docs/ios/voice/fax/configuration/guide/vf_cfg_t38_fxrly_ps10592_TSD_Products_Configuration_Guide_Chapter.html
A. No, there is no plan to support SG3 on MGCP.
A. Yes, but it depends on the SIP trunk provider and what they support either T.38 or fax passthrough.
A. Bandwidth consumption. Fax over VoIP would require a higher fidelity codec such as G.711. Typical VoIP calls use G.729 which doesn't handle tones well as it is optimized for speech. T.38 will only use the BW required for the fax (ie. 14.4 overhead, etc).
A. No. Cube can't transcode from T.38 to G.711.
A. Weakeness is lack of RTP header which makes the T.38pProtocol not support features such as SRTP for secure transaction of FAX and CRTP for bandwidth savings which some customers might look for.
A. Probably. Contact the fax server vendor for implementation details.
A. UDP is ideal for real-time applications such as T.38 due to lower overhead. Retransmissions within TCP will not benefit a real-time application like VoIP or Fax over IP.
A. Yes, SIP TLS and SRTP is supported in Cisco IOS.
Q. Will the presentation be available for download or later review?
A. Yes, it will be available so that you can review and download.
It will be on the Cisco Support Community https://supportforums.cisco.com.
Great doc!
--
Jorge Armijo
+5 - Nice Work.
-Terry
why I am getting this message 'Forbidden File or Application' ? When tried to access these--
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