trouble recieving certain faxes

[andy227]

We installed an mpc4502 as a fax recently to a solicitors office. At the customer they complained that faxes from some banks were not coming through but other faxes were. They were blaming our fax. They connected the old fax in front of me and it seemed to be doing the same thing. I was wondering, is there something about bank mail/statements that prevents them going through the fax ? I think I have come across this before.

[slimslob]

Re: trouble recieving certain faxes

There are a number of possible causes. If the C4502 is answering then hanging up, then there is a hand shake problem. Most likely a line noise problem. Since the customer claims the old machine used to work and now does not, they need to contact their dial tone provider. Another potential problem would be a new machine or line noise at the sending end.

If it appears to be receiving but not printing, it could be a secure fax that requires the entry of a security code in older to print it. Check the operator's manual for details on how to check for secure faxes.

[andy227]

Re: trouble recieving certain faxes

slimslob, not the old m/c worked and now does not, faxes are recieved as normal, faxes from banks are not being recieved. I connected their old fax to prove it was not a fax m/c issue but the source. Faxes from certain banks, and only banks, are not coming through.

[KenB]

Re: trouble recieving certain faxes

Like SlimSlob said, there are a ton of possible reasons.

One of which, and the hardest to address, is a compatibility issue.

This tends to happen more when one end or the other is a fax server, which is quite possible, seeing how the sending source is a bank.

I work with Rightfax from time to time, and had a similar problem a while back.

My customer had the Rightfax, and faxes going to a certain government office, of which there were 4 they sent to, would fail.

Their 2 Ricoh MP 171s, and even a fax appliance we had there for a while, never failed.

Turned out to be a firmware update on the Rightfax fax gateway, which was the modem that connected to the analog phone lines.

I never was able to find out what those 4 offices had for fax, but I'm pretty sure they were stand alone faxes or MFPs.

If you work with fax much, and have a notebook, I would highly recommend a fax modem and software for your notebook. You can plug the phone line into it (analog only, of course) and test.

Most notebooks don't have modems anymore. I bought a USB one, that came with its own fax software, for about $35, well worth the investment. (Plus my boss let me expense it. )

It has proven itself quite useful many times for troubleshooting.

[Iowatech]

Re: trouble recieving certain faxes

The old fax machines are probably not compatible with modern equipment.
Some fax history: back in the day when fax communication was invented, the amount of original fax communication instructions wasn't that large. However, the original fax specifications included twice as much memory so that more modern machines could have enhanced features in the future.
At that time, many decent fax manufacturers made sure that extra memory was zeroed out, so that even the old machines would be compatible with anything newer. Others did not, leaving random nonsense in the extra memory. It didn't matter then as that memory wasn't being used.
Fast forward to the present, new fax machines are using the previously unused instruction memory for enhanced features. The old machines that didn't have that memory zeroed out are now transmitting falsely that they have some of the new features and that is what is most likely causing the problem.
There are three solutions for this problem:
The first is the people using the old fax machines need to ditch '90s era tech and start using email, or something even more modern.
The second is if they must use fax communications, they must upgrade to newer equipment.
The third and last option is that you will need to start turning off the newer fax features on your machine. Turning off ECM is a good test, but if you leave it that way be prepared for unnecessary errors sending and receiving faxes from the people with newer faxes.
Good luck.

[teebee1234]

Re: trouble recieving certain faxes

Below is a list of sp settings you may want to change as recommended by Ricoh whenever you're dealing with server based faxing/voip lines and you are getting issues. Basically it slows it down and allows more time for responses to various requests between the devices.

At the very bottom of this post I have added a couple of paragraphs from a technical paper I had found online. It may be helpful in explaining to customers why they are having issues faxing, especially once they have switched from a copper phone line to voip.

************************************************** ************************************************** ************************************************** ***********
Many of our customers have switched their telephone system to VoIP (Internet Telephone) or are planning to do this in the near future.

To make it possible to further use the analog fax systems with these telephone systems, the plant operators use ATA-boxes (Analog Terminal Adapter). To use the fax systems with these adapters the following adjustments are recommended:




1. Deactivation of JBIG - Encoding
SP 1-104-001 ( COM SW 00 ) Bit 0 to 0 / Bit 2 to 0

2. Changing the DIS - Block length to 4 Bytes
SP 1-105-002 ( G3 SW 01 ) Bit 4 to 1

3. Deactivation of V8 - Protocols ( "Super G3" / max. 14400 Bit/s )
SP 1-105-004 ( G3 SW 03 ) Bit 2 to 0

With some telephone systems it is necessary to fix the speed of the modem to 9600 bits (sending and receiving)
SP 1-105-006 ( G3 SW 05 ) Bit 0 and 1 to 0 / Bit 2 to 1 / Bit 3 to 0
SP 1-105-007 ( G3 SW 06 ) Bit 0 and 1 to 0 / Bit 2 to 1 / Bit 3 to 0

4. If recommended by the plant operator, switch off ECM
Be careful because this might result in data loss, and only change this if the System administrator request this and that this change is done at own risk
SP 1-104-002 ( COM SW 01 ) Bit 0 to 0

5. Use of the default G3 protocol mode
SP 1-105-003 ( G3 SW 02 ) Bit 0 to 1

6. Max allowable block intervall when receiving image files /decoding time of the first line in the reception mode.
SP 1-105-011 ( G3 SW 0A ) Bit 4 and 6 to 1

Suggested adjustments are for Ricoh manufactured devices and do not apply to OEM models.
__________________________________________________ __________________

You’ve no doubt been on a phone call where someone cuts out momentarily and you miss a part of a word or two. That’s a packet(s) not reaching the other end of its VoIP journey to your phone or arriving too late, in which case the packet will be discarded. In those cases, all you have to do is ask the other person to repeat their last sentence. And believe it or not, in other cases a word or two is dropped and your brain is able to interpolate the missing information without your even realizing it consciously. This is why voice managed to make the transition to IP despite the imperfections.

A fax, by contrast, cannot be compressed and cannot tolerate even a tiny percentage of packet loss — even a 1% packet loss, and more than a couple seconds of delay, can cause the connection to time-out and the fax to fail. It also cannot tolerate a break in the packet sequence which could result in more delay. The recipient’s fax machine might very well read any of these issues as a problem with the inbound fax, and kill the entire transmission.

The second problem: Fax transmissions have low tolerance for interoperability issues. The hundreds of millions of active fax machines in the world use several different fax protocols — T.30, T.38 and G.711 being the primary ones, and speeds like V.14 or V.34, while VoIP typically uses G.729 to compress calls and save bandwidth.

When a fax is sent over an analog network like the phone system, the two fax machines communicate with each other and agree on the type and speed of transmission. But when the fax is being transmitted over VoIP, any gaps in the tones create the same problems for the recipient’s fax machine.

If a fax travels over a VoIP network from a machine using one protocol and arrives at a machine that expects another, this can cause gaps in the fax’s analog tones as the system tries to work out the protocol issues. The fax machines misinterpret the gaps and lose synchronization with each other.