Internet real-time faxing

Abstract

Internet faxing circumvents expensive international telephone toll charges in transcontinental fax exchanges by using the Internet as an intermediary medium to transport fax messages between senders and recipients. To make Internet faxing as successful as traditional faxing, it is necessary to support real-time delivery of fax messages over the Internet. However, existing fax transportation mechanisms such as Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) are unable to provide such real-time support. Instead, real-time delivery will involve the transmission of packetised fax data through the packet switched network environment of the Internet with possible loss of data, thereby causing quality degradation. In this research, we focus on investigating an adaptive control and recovery mechanism for supporting real-time fax communications over the Internet. In addition, an Internet fax adapter is investigated to provide a seamless interface for traditional fax users to capture destination fax numbers in fax-to-fax communications. The system architecture and implementation of an Internet real-time faxing system are also studied.