If you use a fax machine often, you may be wondering about faxing with VoIP. Many SunRocket users are faxing with SunRocket for small and home office needs.

If you use a fax machine often, you may be wondering about faxing with VoIP. Many SunRocket users are faxing with SunRocket for small and home office needs.

SunRocket continues to improve its faxing capabilities and has just made available the firmware upgrade to 3.0.75. Users are finding this upgrade is making faxing with SunRocket more stable. Remember, your fax reliability depends greatly on the speed of your broadband connection. Here are some tips on faxing with SunRocket.

What to look for in a fax machine
When purchasing a fax, always look for Fax Transmission Speeds described in terms like "G3 compatible", "sends 1 page per 6 seconds" or "modem speed at 9,600 bps or 14,400 bps" (sometimes shown as 14.4k bps). If your fax machine package indicates this level of performance, your in good shape to fax with SunRocket.

Avoid Super G3 speed

There is another fax speed out there called Super G3. Most consumer grade faxes don't offer Super G3 speed. Fax machines supporting Super G3 are most typically found in a corporate business environment. While sometimes a fax in Super G3 mode will go through using SunRocket service, longer faxes are more likely to have some sort of transmission problem, and we cannot guarantee reliable operation of Super G3 fax transmissions.

Faxing Protocols

There are a few things to look for when choosing a provider if faxing is important to you. One of these is the faxing protocols supported by the provider. Faxes require a more reliable connection than voice calls, and faxing protocols have been designed to provide this reliability over VoIP. Two protocols that are designed for faxing with VoIP are g.711 and T.38.

SunRocket uses the G.711 VoIP protocols to send both voice and fax calls. G.711 is the closest format to the traditional telephone network and needs 80-90 kbps to operate which broadband easily supports. In addition, SunRocket supports the protocol T.38 for fax. This protocol was developed by Cisco Systems and is the industry standard for fax. So, when faxing with SunRocket, a combination of VoIP and traditional telephone companies may be involved to get your call to it's destination. If the service provider you're faxing to doesn't support T.38 your back to using G.711.