[COLUG] Business net access in Dublin

[Shane Zatezalo]

On May 6, 2008, at 10:48 PM, Dave Maxwell wrote:

> On Tue May 6 2008, Dave wrote:
>
>> In general, faxing over VOIP is not reliable. As I understand it,
>> there is a protocol called T.38 for faxing over voip (see on of links
>> below) Is there a reason they absolutely have to use VOIP for faxing?
>> I would be tempted to use one of the fax to email providers such as
>> efax.com (I don't know which is the best one). Or just get a regular
>> phone line for faxing.
>
> They bought VOIP equipment that implements T.38.  They basically  
> want one
> communications bill.  I haven't implemented any of this.  My (our)  
> advice is
> merely sought.
>
> I have mentioned that a POTS line is the path of least resistance  
> for the fax.
>
>> Some links you may want to read before fighting this more. Of course,
>> this doesn't mean that TW isn't at least partly to blame, but you
>> should probably read more about this (unless of course you already
>> know about it) before moving forward with anything else.
>
> Yeah, I've read similar things.  Their latency simply degrades on a  
> late
> afternoon schedule.  They can reliably fax until kids start getting  
> home from
> school and adults from work.   This behaivor is consistent.  The  
> equipment
> seems to properly implement fax over IP as well as possible.
>
> What they wanted to do was rip out their out of date analog PBX and  
> go all
> digital but it seems that they may have to bend for the sake of  
> faxing.
>
> Unless others have a better idea, I'm going to tell them to go with  
> the DSL
> and dedicated line for the fax if possible.
>

Why not put a firewall on the line that you can assign weights/ 
priorities to the packets by origin/type.

Then whens the outbound pipe is > X threshhold usage, throttle P2P/IM.  
MySpace taking up too much bandwidth? You've got to be kidding.  
Throttle the outbound http traffic too then. Aren't these people  
supposed to be *working* when they are in their cubicles? ;)

You can get Fiber from Time Warner Business Class. We have it at my  
day job. It is *nice* and *quick*. You pick your cap speed and that  
affects what you pay. Rates were great when we signed up a few years  
ago. We are also able to use their servers for DNS. We can call them  
and have a change made, but they also give a webbish interface so you  
can do it on your own (my preference). Actually, my preference is a  
zone file accessable with ssh and emacs... :)

FYI: I have Road Runner business into my home (for my business). Never  
had any real problems and the speed is consistent, not like residential.

Shane