What is the best way to handle a bunch of fax lines? I'm looking to setup a local fax server that I can pack full of models so 40 users can receive faxes directly to their desktops. Other than adding a ton of USB modems or buying $4,500 Brooktrout 8-modem PCI cards I'm at a bit of a loss. Any suggestions?
Lots of fax lines in one server
faxmodem
Best Answer
You don't need to setup 1 modem per user. You just need enough lines to handle the concurrent traffic. So if you only have at max 3 fax operations going on at a time, you only need 3 fax modems and a 4-port multi-modem card will handle that traffic.
We setup a solution supporting about 300 users. The server is RedHat Linux running Hylafax with a Perle 4 port multi-modem card. We then have our phone system set to convert the DID number (in our case, the last for digits of the phone number) to the CallerID information. Then on Hylafax side, we have a configuration that links the CallerID to an email address.
So remote person dials 1-123-456-7890, that is set to a pool that balances to one of the 4 lines, the callerID information gets set to 7890, hylafax answers the modem, converts the fax TIFF to a PDF and emails it to the address associated with 7890. This solution also allows outbound faxing from the desktop using HylaFSP on our Windows workstations.
I am not a phone person, so I am a little sketchy on the details of the magic that happens at the phone level, but hopefully what I have posted is enough to get you in the right direction.