AboutGerry Magill Expertise I am a Software Architect employed by a large multi-national communications company providing VoIP and tradtional TDM communications to Enterprise customers.
Experience
Past/Present clients IBM, SBS, Siemens, KPMG, Bank Berlin, Commerzbank
Expert: Gerry Magill Date: 10/20/2007 Subject: not able to fax after two years
Question QUESTION: I have had Optimum voice from Cablevision since 5/2005 and have never had any issues faxing from my Sharp UX300 fax machine to any fax machine. Just recently - the last 1.5 months I have not been able to fax to most fax machines except for ones that only are able to connect at 2400 baud.
What I do is I plug the fax directly into the cable modems telephone jack thereby eliminating the house wiring.
I get the following displayed on the LCD for those fax's that don't connect at 2400 ...
RCV ... NSF .. CSI .. DIS .. then
SND ... TSI .. DCS ... TCF.. then about 20 seconds later ..
Line error.
Cablevision said this on their website:
=================================================
"Can I fax with my cable modem?
Answer
Cable modems cannot send faxes in the conventional sense. Fax machines use telephone lines to establish a direct fax machine-to-fax machine connection through the phone system. The cable modem establishes a TCP/IP connection to the Internet.
There are fax servers on the Internet which will take your e-mail and or e-mail attachments and fax them to regular fax machines for a fee or for free. You'll have to search on the Internet for them.
I have spent too many hours asking Cablevision WHY after over 2 years do I have an issue all of a sudden.
I am tempted to buy this
Sharp® UX-A1000E Plain Paper Inkjet Fax
see http://www.officedepot.com/browse.do?Nr=200000&N=2525295
but will it solve my problem.
I was even recommended to put in a dsl filter.
Are any of these fax services completely free?
PLEASE HELP - VERY FRUSTRATED.
ANSWER: Sorry to hear you are having problems with your fax, however, it's a pretty common problem nowadays with Voice over IP. However, I am surprised at Cablevisions response. They actually don't run their service using the SIP protocol which causes the problems people typically see with fax over IP, but instead use a much more robust NCS / DOCSIS protocol which is very capable of sending faxes reliably.
I think you just got a bad support specialist. I would try calling a few times until you find someone who understands the problem and doesnt waste your time with silly statements about DSL line filters - geeez.
Having said that, I would check that your internet connection does not have a large amount of packet loss. You can check this by pinging some well known servers on the internet such as cnn.com or adelphia.net and see if you are getting packet loss. A high packet loss could be a sign of a heavily overloaded network in your area. This of course would lead to terrible speech quality and fax problems.
If you have large packet loss, mention that to your cablevision support specialist when you call and ask them if there is a general problem in your area or if perhaps your cable modem needs to be replaced.
Let me know how it goes - it should DEFINITELY work.
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: Funny you should mention about replacing the cable modem because I did that (& didn't mentiom that to you above in my original inquiry) only because I thought that perhaps the telephone jack portion of the cable modem could be faulty.
Here are the results of my 2 pings:
(abbreviated version)
Pinging adelphia.net [24.54.92.12] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 24.54.92.12: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=245
Reply from 24.54.92.12: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=245
Reply from 24.54.92.12: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=245
Reply from 24.54.92.12: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=245
Reply from 24.54.92.12: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=245
Reply from 24.54.92.12: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=245
Reply from 24.54.92.12: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=245
Reply from 24.54.92.12: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=245
Reply from 24.54.92.12: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=245
Reply from 24.54.92.12: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=245
Reply from 24.54.92.12: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=245
Ping statistics for 24.54.92.12:
Packets: Sent = 253, Received = 253, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 16ms, Maximum = 25ms, Average = 18ms
This is ESPN:
Reply from 199.181.132.250: bytes=32 time=95ms TTL=111
Reply from 199.181.132.250: bytes=32 time=95ms TTL=111
Reply from 199.181.132.250: bytes=32 time=95ms TTL=111
Reply from 199.181.132.250: bytes=32 time=95ms TTL=111
Reply from 199.181.132.250: bytes=32 time=95ms TTL=111
Reply from 199.181.132.250: bytes=32 time=97ms TTL=111
Reply from 199.181.132.250: bytes=32 time=95ms TTL=111
Reply from 199.181.132.250: bytes=32 time=95ms TTL=111
Reply from 199.181.132.250: bytes=32 time=96ms TTL=111
Ping statistics for 199.181.132.250:
Packets: Sent = 432, Received = 432, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 94ms, Maximum = 226ms, Average = 96ms
I am getting on the phone with them right now.
BTW, if my regular analog phone works fine, then shouldn't my fax machine.
Answer The results look excellent.
A phone is different from a fax because the human ear is more forgiveing. The fact that your phone works doesnt not mean your fax must work. A G3 fax will only permit a certain number of errors per page. After those transmission errors have been reached it will give up.
A modem for a PC works differently too. It will ask for each packet to be re-transimitted that it looses. So the throughput speed may go down but it will still communicated. A fax is really a totally different animal.
I would keep on the line until you find a reliable technical support person. If you get rubbish, tell them politely you think their response is not correct and hang up and try again.
