[olug] Level3 and fax modems over VOIP

[Ken MacFerrin]

Rob Townley wrote:
> You may be aware that faxing or using a modem over a VOIP line
> generally does not work, and if it does, it probably does not work
> well.  Even Vonage does not work well.  I discussed this with
> LightYear.net, ( a VOIP provider that provides Omaha telephone #s )
> and they said the hardware they sell and the SIP protocol used both
> are capable of faxing over VOIP, but that their provider Level3 does
> not support it.
> 
> Can anybody confirm that this really is a problem with Level3?  If you
> got faxing & modem communications to work, did you have to pay extra? 
> Anybody know if Vonage uses LVLT.net?
> 
> p.s. I used iConnectHere.com because it was $8.95/month and after
> several months could pretty much get single page faxes to work and
> much later multiple page faxes, but it was not all that reliable.  I
> decided it was worth the trouble.
> 
> p.s.s. I am a stockholder and needless to say i was very disappointed
> that lvlt.net and level3.com were down some today!

I moved to Colorado and have been using Vonage for over a year now with 
a Motorola vt1000v ATA and haven't had any issue with sending or 
receiving multipage faxes regularly on my Brother fax machine (except 
when the dog chewed up my cable line :).  I'm on the Premium phone plan 
and do not pay for the dedicated fax line.

Vonage does not use Level3's VoIP service (Enhanced Local or HomeTone). 
  I believe they had Global Crossing as their preferred carrier. 
Packet8 (aka 8x8) on the other hand is using Level3's Enhanced Local 
VoIP solution.  I've never tried faxing via a Packet8 line but if you 
have enough bandwidth (especially upstream) and an ATA or router with 
decent QoS you should not have an issue.

-Ken