by Russell Shaw
A large Indiana Sheriff’s office upgrades to a FaxCore-Cantata VoIP-Fax Solution.
Based in Evansville, Indiana, the Vanderburgh County
Sheriff’s Office moved into a brand new 150,000 square foot,
state-of-the art facility in January 2006. The facility houses up
to 512 inmates.
As part of its workflow processes, the Sheriff’s Office heavily
relies on fax communications, such as the sending and receiv-
ing of paperwork between the facility and attorneys, the county
court (four miles away) and other law enforcement agencies at
state and federal levels.
These communications needs were handled by 15 standalone
fax machines. But that was before the Vanderburgh County
Sheriff’s Office deployed a new VoIP-based phone system–
namely FaxCore, a web-based IP-enabled system from Parker,
Colorado-based Fax-Over-IP solutions provider FaxCore Corp-
oration.
FaxCore is a web-based solution enabling users to centralize,
control, and manage all types of fax communications and stream-
line business processes. Its intuitive, browser-based interface allows
users to send and receive faxes from within a web browser, or email
application such as Microsoft Outlook. Using a thin-client system,
organizations can easily deploy and maintain FaxCore, and seam-
lessly integrate the solution to “fax-enable” other applications.
The path that led Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office man-
ager of information systems Greg Selby to FaxCore was multi-
dimensional. Selby says that with the cost of paper, toner, and
on-going maintenance contracts, the old standalone fax machine
way of doing things was no longer practical–especially with the
growth of fax transmissions projected for last January when the
Sheriff’s Office moved from the county courthouse to its own fa-
cility four miles away. Documents once delivered by hand now
needed to be fax-delivered, further increasing workload.
Fortunately, the county government already was a VoIP user–
namely via Cisco 7940s configured with 20 Direct Inward Dial
lines. The goal, then, was a solution enabling the Sheriff’s Office to
leverage their existing VoIP investment and slice the cost of operat-
ing a fax server by consolidating the fax activity on a common net-
work infrastructure while eliminating dedicated analog circuits.
Selby ultimately chose TMI (TransOptions Messaging, Inc.)
as its implementation partner and reseller for a solution that
would involve FaxCore and Needham, Massachusetts-based
IP communications solution provider Cantata Technology’s
Brooktrout SR140, a software-only intelligent fax platform. The
goal was to link the FaxCore server to the VoIP system, enabling
real-time fax-over-IP using the T.38 fax-over-IP protocol. The
Brooktrout SR140 has been tested and certified with market-
leading T.38 gateways, including Cisco’s.
Selby worked alongside FaxCore engineers to implement the
fax server solution within the VoIP system. When the solution
went live in February 2006, it was one of the first deployments
of its kind. The main challenge: unlike the asynchronous nature
of IP networks, faxing is a real-time synchronous technology.
The fax process defined by the real time T.30 fax protocol relies
on exact timing tolerances.
To provide fax-over-IP compatibility, some fax servers use a
G.711 voice codec to transmit and receive faxes over an IP net-
work. It sounds easy, but passing an analog fax signal through
a codec optimized for voice communication can evoke latency
and jitter, which aren’t tolerated by fax devices. At Vanderburgh,
this potential deal-breaker was solved by the Brooktrout SR140’s
T.38 capability. T.38 acts as a wrapper around T.30 protocol mes-
sages that are packetized for delivery over an IP network, get-
ting around T.30’s limitations via techniques like “spoofing” that
keep the fax connection alive while fax data in transit catches
up with the process.
Given the sensitive nature of the documents being transmitted to-
and-from the Sheriff’s office, security is a key concern. The Brooktrout
SR140 takes this into account by using T.30 and T.38 protocol
implementations that transfer T.4 and T.6 fax images solely.
Currently, the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office has 50 Fax
Core users. Selby says the Sheriff’s Office sends and receives hun-
dreds of faxes a month–a number he expects to expand as new pro-
cesses and applications are added to this system. Some of these are
expected to be FaxCore access for Vanderburgh County’s detective
unit and even for Indiana’s Department of Corrections. “Currently,
there are as many as 200 personnel at the Indiana Department of
Corrections who could benefit from FaxCore,” Selby says.
And as to the overall cost economies from the FaxCore-
Brooktrout SR140 solution?
While not being able to cite a specific return-on-investment,
“I know we’ve saved a lot on toner cartridges,” says Selby. V
Russell Shaw is our Features Editor. He is also author of the
book, Wireless Networking Made Easy. You can reach him at
rshaw@vonmag.com.
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