Handytone 286 Fax Machine issues
Now, please forgive me if this isn't actually a Handytone issue. I have a Trixbox running 2.6.2.3. It has a Sangoma A101DE T1 card, on which we have 8 channels for voice.
Connected to this Trixbox I have an HT286 that is connected to a fax machine. The fax machine is setup through trixbox as a fax machine (I.e. in general setup, the fax is pointed to it's extension. However, I have done no additional configuration of the fax extension, since I treat it like a SIP extension. The fax machine works most of the time. When it doesn't work, I get "comm. error" and it retries and retries and retries until it gives up after the 3rd retry. The fax machine is an HP 3055 All-in-One OfficeJet. The logs from Asterisk show the call connects successfully but ends with a hangup "cause 16".
The weird part is that it only has issues with certain numbers. And that with those numbers, the issues are repeatable over and over again. (I.e. Never able to successfully send a fax to them.) The configuration on my HT286 is default except for the following change. Without this it would not successfully fax anyone. The T.38 auto detection seemed to mess it up:
Fax: Passthrough
All of that being said, I'm sure it's something I've missed, or mis-configured. I guess my question is, why is it working with 85% or so of the faxes we send, but repeatedly failing on certain numbers? Any suggestions would be welcome, if you need more information, please let me know and I'll paste what I can.
*Edit: One of the suggestions given to me locally here at the office is to slow down the baud rate on the fax machine, as it is greater than the sampling rate of the VoIP stream.
So I've partially resolved this.
It has nothing to do with the handytone, but with the fax machine itself.
By default the fax machine is set to start at v.34 33600.
However, it seems this sampling rate is higher than the standard sampling rate on the line. I am now looking into configuring Trixbox to allow a higher sampling rate on the G711 codec, say in the range of 48KHz to be safe.
Setting the fax to the old standby, v.17 9600 has resulted in successful sending of faxes to all numbers that previously had issues. It is much slower, but it works 100% of the time.
In order to correct the issue, I have added the following to my sip_custom_post.conf file:
[301]
disallow=all
allow=ulaw
allow=alaw
echocancel=no
This overrides the defaults with these settings, ensuring the use of the proper codecs, and ensuring the line doesn't use the echo cancelling feature.
I have also disabled the echo cancelling on the HT286, and disabled all codecs except for PCMa and PCMu.


Member Since:
2009-03-24