SIP Forum to Host First Fax-over-IP Interoperability Workshop

Saying problems with reliability and interoperability are keeping many businesses from embracing cost-saving fax-over-IP technology, or “FoIP,” industry insiders are calling for participants in a free workshop they’re holding in San Francisco next month.

The SIP Forum, an IP communications industry association, has announced that FoIP companies such as the event sponsor, Dialogic (News - Alert) Inc., will help lead the “Fax-over-IP Interoperability Workshop” from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 10.

Though demand for FoIP services is high, officials say, differences in telecom industry standards for the technology often hinder its use.

Specifically – although the International Telecommunication Union’s so-called “T.38” fax relay standard helped solve problems that came with transmitting a fax over a different protocol, known as “G.711,” that’s mainly used for telephony – many service providers with VoIP gateways don’t support T.38.

“Fax traffic is highly sensitive to packet loss,” industry insiders say on the SIP Forum (News - Alert). “The loss of fax packets – from latency or jitter, for example – results in faxes to fail and be re-transmitted which uses more bandwidth and lowers the end user’s satisfaction. Many carriers desire a FoIP solution that allows them to utilize their non-T.38 infrastructure to reliably carry fax traffic.”

Operation of the T.38 standard is diagrammed below:

Many businesses use T.38 to transmit faxes, but interpret the standard’s specifications differently, FoIP insiders say. That leads to interoperability problems among vendors.

The workshop is designed to allow engineers, service providers and researchers to help solve the problems, especially as to how SIP could be used in that effort.

“If the workshop identifies concrete proposals to improve FoIP that would require modifications to the underlying protocols, we will forward these proposals to the appropriate groups in the IETF, IEEE (News - Alert), or ITU-T,” organizers say.

The SIP Forum Workshop Team includes: Marc Robins, SIP Forum managing director; Richard Shockey of NeuStar Inc., the workshop’s chair; Eric Burger (News - Alert), SIP Forum chairman, who will head its program committee; and Max Schroeder (News - Alert), FaxCore Inc., who will serve as the whip for the event.

Special mention and special thanks are going to Dialogic, as the event’s sponsor, as well as Rob Moran and Jeff Dworkin, both of Dialogic.

Topics of interest will include: interoperability failures seen in the field or lab; reliability or quality issues seen in the field or lab; deployment and development experiences; architectural principals; and proposals for achieving a higher degree of FoIP interoperability and FoIP reliability, as well as for soliciting additional real-world feedback from implementers and service providers.

The SIP Forum is accepting FoIP-relevant position papers for the workshop, which can be submitted here. For a list of acceptable submission formats, see the workshop announcement.

“The expectation is this will be a highly interactive workshop,” Shockey said. “In order to frame the conversation, the workshop chair will open the discussion. At the discretion of the workshop chair and dependent upon the quality and number of position papers received, the workshop chair may request formal presentations.”

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Michael Dinan is a contributing editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To read more of Michael’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Michael Dinan

(source: http://sip-trunking.tmcnet.com/topics/enterprise-voip/articles/44540-sip-forum-host-first-fax-over-ip-interoperability.htm)

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