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Thinking about deploying IP fax to improve your business operations?

IP fax solutions provider Sagem-Interstar and network gear maker Cisco will be presenting a three-part series of webcasts, “Demystifying Fax over IP (FoIP),” starting next week. The series will provide a technical overview of FoIP fundamentals, applications and advanced networking considerations.

The first webcast, “FoIP Fundamentals,” to be presented at 1 p.m., ET, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009, will cover the history of fax communications up through today’s IP-based systems, with an overview of fax servers, the current fax ecosystem and trends in Fax over IP (FoIP).

The presentation will cover the basics of IP fax, including FoIP servers and their benefits in the emerging unified communications/enterprise content management context; technology fundamentals (i.e. T.38 vs. G.711, standards developments, and QOS concerns); concerns regarding FoIP reliability and why the reluctance to deploy; the transition to FoIP with VoIP already in place (application of VoIP QoS policies toward FoIP); and G3 and SG3 faxes, including how they are handled with FoIP, QoS, H.323/SIP call control support, T.38, etc.

The webcast will be hosted by David Hanes of Cisco’s (News - Alert) customer advanced engineering group. Hanes is co-author of the Cisco Press book "Fax, Modem, and Text for IP Telephony." Joining Hanes will be John Nikolopoulos, who overseas all marketing and product management activities at Sagem-Interstar (News - Alert). 

The second Webcast in the series, “FoIP Applications – How a Fax Server Integrates into an IP Network,” will be presented at 1 p.m., ET, Thursday, Sept. 17.

This webcast will go into greater depth about fax servers, including how they communicate with various devices on an IP network. Attendees will learn about today’s hottest new FoIP deployment and integration models. They will also learn about the advantages/disadvantages and challenges of legacy models (PSTN plugged directly into a fax board). In addition this webcast will cover all the modern FoIP server solutions from basic (single voice gateway models) to more complex (with Cisco Call Manager integration, multiple voice gateways, MFPs, and API connections to back-end systems).

This webcast will be presented by Hanes and Christian Larocque, who is responsible for business development and major global accounts for Sagem-Interstar (News - Alert).

The third and final webcast, “Advanced FoIP networking considerations: Cisco AXP-SRST, FoIP survivability, MGCP,” will be presented at 1 p.m., ET, Thursday, Oct. 15.

This webcast will cover Cisco AXP-SRST, FoIP Survivability and MGCP. Attendees will learn about the technical ins and outs of advanced FoIP networking considerations, including FoIP troubleshooting techniques and engineering guidelines involving bandwidth, latency, packet loss, etc.; how MGCP voice gateways can be accessed by a fax server through Cisco Call Manager; and how the Cisco AXP-SRST solution delivers advanced survivability, security and scalability.

This webcast will include presentations from Hanes as well as Matthew Miller, who is responsible for overseeing the XMediusFAX product line lifecycle for Sagemn-Interstar.

To register for the first of these informative and comprehensive webcasts, “FoIP Fundamentals,” to be presented at 1 p.m., ET, Thursday, Aug. 20, click here.