ADSL & FAX

[hallpam40]

Evening all
I'm a newbie to ADSL (less than 24 hours) after 7 years of dial-up. Although so far I have found it "faster" than dial up, its not as fast as I expected[?]. However that is not currently the issue.

I am running Small business server 2003 which on dial up used to be able to receive/send faxes via the modem. Now after installing adsl, no modems are found to use with the fax software. Does any one have any "bright ideas"?[:I]

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated[)].

 

[mbs]

Did you get rid of your modem? You should still be able to use it for fax transfer and receipt on your server through the existing line, even though its now been enabled for ADSL. Just plug the other telephone cable from the splitter box into a micro-filter, then another cable from the micro-filter into the modem, and away you go. Of course, this will not work if your server software no longer sees a modem, but presumably it's still there, either plugged into a serial port or via an internal chipset (COM1, 2, 3 or 4, as the case may be)...

 

[hallpam40]

Fortunately not, only unplugged it[]. I had thought of this as a suggestion, but (Naively[]) thought that adsl could also handle it at the same time. I was hoping that one "modem" would do the trick, I suppose. It appears I was wrong[:I]

Many thanks for your speedy reply

 

[loosecannon]

the ADSL "modem" is not a modem at all it is more of a "bridge" than anything else the ability to send/recive faxes is done via the micro filter similar to a filter for a sub woofer in a speaker system low frequancy voice/fax data gets sent to the phone/modem high frequancy ADSL signals go to the ADSL "modem"

many have been caught out by this and i belive the fault lies at telkom for not having educated staff to educate users ...

 

[hallpam40]

Thanks, Loosecannon, for this explanation.

This does make sense, I agree Telkom should educate their users: at no point was this explained that I would still need to keep my modem, fortunately I did, and will connect it back up tomorrow

Another confusing thing though is that when I phoned Telkom yesterday to check my adsl speed, I was told sending via adsl is faster than receive, and that 256 kbps receive is "normal" - I was told that adsl is 512 receive when I purchased it. Hence my surprise that my speed is not as fast as I expected it, ah well, another instance of "good marketing" I suppose....

Anyway, will reconnect my dial up for the fax,

Thanks guys for the support

Does any one have any ideas about "tweaking" the speed of the adsl line?

 

[loosecannon]

A in ADSL id for Asymetric ie your download and uploaad rates differ in this case 256/512 ...

you will download at 512 and upload at 256 of course there other variables like congestion on the DSLAM [port at the exchange] as well as the fact the service is a contended shaped service web browsing of local sites [telkom esp is faster than all others and has precedence] ...

the easy way to understand this is like a queue for a bus everyone runs for the bus and then trickles on one by one however not first come first served the elderly/frail will be often let ahead and some school kids might fly past everyone and get on first ...

 

[hallpam40]

I understand the asymetric, however it appears I am <b>downloading</b> at no more than 256

I did the Telkom tests and a 10 mb file was downloaded in less than 3 mins .... is this good?

Only having dial up to compare with, it seems good, but I have noticed that the first time you visit a page it can take 30 secs to load, thereafter about 3 secs. hey forgive me, I am "still testing" the adsl software/connection.

Thanks for your patience with a "newbie"

 

[loosecannon]

telkom have a transparent cacheing proxy and this accounts for some of this and it is far more noticeable than on dialup as you have plenty free bandwidth ...

also this time of the month there is plenty cap mopping going on ... when users blow there cap on any download they can find ... the best days for adsl BW is the middle two weeks of the month ...