We do not have a POTS phone line. All of our information (telephone, cable TV, internet) is through a single cable TV connection with cable modem.

What we want to do is acquire an inexpensive fax machine and every once in a while (maybe every couple of months) unplug the telephone, plug the fax machine in its place, and send (and very rarely) receive a fax. As an additional data point, my TiVo successfully updates the program schedule every day, and it is not an internet access but through dialing a telephone number.

SWMBO has been told that a fax machine will not work in this VOIP situation. If not, why not?

tanstaafl.

It does work but you need to set it up right. The VoIP line will need the codec adjusted to the highest bitrate you can set. The fax will need the baud rate lowered.

It's hit and miss. We can send faxes to some numbers, and not to others. Distance seems irrelevant.

This is with the machine on the slowest baud settings, and the Linksys PAP2T ATA set up as best as it can be for fax transmission.

In some cases, "T.38" capability might help -- our PAP2T doesn't have that feature.

Cheers

There appear to be various free online services which will send a fax for you e.g. TPC. If your fax isn't confidential and you don't mind the advert on it, this could be a solution to the sending part at least.

In my experience, TPC almost never works. I have used FaxZero, though, which allows you to pay for outgoing faxes. Of course, any of this will require a scanner.

I have never been able to get fax to work over a voip service that goes through the internet like Vonage. I have gotten fax over voip to work when going over a local network. To get those to work we have had to set the fax to a max transmit and receive speed of 9600 bps which was the max the ata would support. If we left them set a defaults where it would start trying at 33600 bps they would always fail.

My little ISP in Australia (Exetel) supports email to fax. I just email a PDF to <phone number>@fax.exemail.com.au. Does require a scanner as mentioned aboved. They also offer the reverse service turning faxes into emails.

I'm sure there would be someone online that could provide a similar service (at a cost).

My fax (an old, cheap HP office jet) works just fine on my Vonage line. Well, paper handling leaves a bit to be desired, but the telecom portion works normally and without any special settings.

I have a comcast connection (generally) with 15 down/5 up.

-jk