Talk:T.38 ITU-T recommendation

Fax Receive... T.38 is protocol that is used for fax coming into your company from the outside world. When a fax machine some where in the world sends a fax to your company it is riding the PSTN using T.30 protocol. That is to say for T.38 protocol to be invoked you must have a signaling device that uses T.38. Cisco gateways as an example use T.38. As such you can use your gateway as a signaling device. When the gateway receives a fax from a fax machine it has the ability to demodulate the T.30 protocol into T.38. Once encoded/Transcoded it can travel your IP network.

Fax Send... Fax machines by nature of the beast have modems built into them. Modems need analog phone lines connected to them. T.38 protocol has no bearing on your legacy (traditional fax machine) fax because traditional fax machines use the PSTN which uses T.30 protocol.

Fax Send...Fax serversallow end users to use their email clients to attach documents to be faxed. Fax servers don't use modems. Rather they use very sophisticated signaling devices. Fax cards or gateways. When a fax server can use the gateway it can then use the T.38 protocol. Mind you the fax travels as attach to the email server, then to the fax server, then to the gateway. T.38 is used when the fax server sends the (now rasterized document) fax to the gateway. The protocol used from the fax server to the gateway is T.38. When the gateway sends the fax it uses T.30 protocol. The communication between the gateway and a traditional fax then is PSTN and T.30. --Scottmsalisbury 15:17, 9 December 2006 (UTC) --Scottmsalisbury 15:17, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]