[Freeswitch-users] Major deployment of outbound FAX on latest version of Freeswitch question

[Andrew Keil]

Steve,

Thanks for your response.

Further clarification on my part:

1) 20,000 to 30,000 pages per day to be sent out.
2) It will be an e-mail to fax style gateway (not fax to e-mail since that would involve inbound faxes)
3) The reason I asked about e-mail to PDF is the initial comments from my client requested the ability to send PDFs and WORD documents (I guess from attachments to the original e-mail), I understand the format that gets faxed should be TIFF so I saw on the freeswitch wiki email2pdf mentioned.  Then ImageMagick can help get a PDF to TIFF.

Can I ask some more questions:

Q1) Based on your experience what would be the average time (in seconds) to send a single fax page (TIFF file) via Freeswitch & Sangoma TDM?  You can quote a TIFF file size to make it more accurate.  From there I should be able to do the math to calculate my Client's requirements better.
Q2) Running on CentOS and using mod_spandsp/Freeswitch & Sangoma TDM what percentage CPU usage would I expect to see if 30 concurrent faxes are being sent at the same time (ie. All channels of my E1 are faxing)?  (The hardware would be a new 1U rack server from a major hardware vendor)
Q3) What version of CentOS 5.x would you recommend?  Would the latest version 5.6 be fine?
Q4) From memory there used to be different fax quality modes on fax machines (STANDARD, FINE & SUPER FINE or something like that).  Is it possible to set the fax send quality from mod_spandsp (also can you provide an example)?  If this is the case could you also answer question (Q1) based on the different fax send quality modes.
Q5) From exisiting deployments of Freeswitch using mod_spandsp (& Sagoma TDM cards (although this is not critical)) what is the largest number of concurrent outbound faxes done on a single box that you know of?

I appreciate your feedback and experience.  It sounds like this will work fine with the mod_spandsp/Freeswitch & Sangoma TDM combination on CentOS.  

I will most likely go for two servers with at least 2 x E1s in each, that way I future proof it a little and add redundancy.  Plus my Client can start using Freeswitch for Voice related services also.  On my side I can also test faxes going out on the first server and via a cross-over cable I can terminate them on the second server (for testing) - much nicer.

Thanks again,

Andrew



-----Original Message-----
From: freeswitch-users-bounces at lists.freeswitch.org [mailto:freeswitch-users-bounces at lists.freeswitch.org] On Behalf Of Steve Underwood
Sent: Saturday, 7 May 2011 12:58 AM
To: FreeSWITCH Users Help
Subject: Re: [Freeswitch-users] Major deployment of outbound FAX on latest version of Freeswitch question

On 05/06/2011 01:14 PM, Andrew Keil wrote:
>
> To Freeswitch developers,
>
> **
>
> *RE: MOD_SPANDSP*
>
> I have a client that wishes to send 20,000 to 30,000 outbound faxes 
> daily and has requested me to quote for a Freeswitch setup that will 
> support this.
>
> I notice the comment on the mod spandsp wiki page: "We are finishing 
> mod_spandsp. It requires full field testing now." Well this could be a 
> perfect opportunity J
>
> _I need to understand the following:_
>
> 1.Does the mod spandsp support the TDM cards (Sangoma) to send faxes 
> out over E1 (Euro ISDN)?
>
> 2.How many concurrent faxes out have been tested using mod_spandsp ? 
> Was this over SIP or over ISDN?
>
> 3.What is the preferred Operating System to use (since basically I 
> would prefer to use the same one as the main developer of mod_spandsp)?
>
> 4.Where do I source the latest *email2pdf* to test that out?
>
> That should be enough to kick this question off.
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> Andrew Keil
>
>
What is the average number of pages per FAX that you expect to send? 
Unless its quite big, this will be a fairly small scale system, so you won't need any fancy hardware.

You can send the FAXes over ISDN or SIP. The Sangoma cards will do a good job if you want to use ISDN E1s. If the average FAX is <=4 pages, you'll probably only need a single E1, and you won't need anything very exotic for the server, unless you are doing quite a lot of works besides sending the FAXes. If this is a FAX only system you can use an E1 card that does not have an echo canceller (EC) module. That saves money. If you will have voice traffic as well, you had better consider buying an EC equipped card.

Centos 5.x is the OS usually recommended for FreeSwitch, as it is what most of the core developers test on.

I'm not clear why you are looking for email2pdf.

Is this going to be some kind of small scale e-mail to FAX gateway? FAX to e-mail is a more common setup, but quite a few people run e-mail to FAX gateways, too.

Steve


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