On Thursday, April 28, 2011, Cisco held a Facebook forum on Fax Over IP. The event was brought to our attention by the CEO of Satori Solutions Chris Schultz. The CISCO online Facebook Support Comminity forum brought in David Hanes. Mr. Hanes fax over IP (foiP) background is extensive. With more than 10 years of experience David is a CCIE, Cisco press author on Fax Over IP (FoIP) and the co-author of the Cisco Press book, Fax, Modem, and Text for IP Telephony".

Many may consider the Fax Over IP Facebook forum just another social media activity within the world of Cisco, but when you dig a bit deeper, there is much more to be said. VoIP Providers and Resellers should take note. Fax Over IP is continuing to gain relevance. Cisco support is continuing to receive inquiries and people don’t want to dig into their archives or read techie manuals. Organizations of all sizes with CISCO equipment are still demanding an answer to the question, What About Fax in my IP world?

Our private conversations with VoIP ISV’s, their resellers and clients with existing successful VoIP implementations seem to concur with the increased volume of FoIP (VoIP fax) inquiry. This increased volume of inquiry in some cases is slowing the sales cycle of VoIP solutions. Key components of the forum included David Hanes thoughts on the relevance of fax, FoIP overview, How to make FoIP work, T.38 versus T.37, Cisco FoIP Certifications and integration best practices, SIP Trunking, Interoperability, V.34 and more.

The component of the Facebook Forum I appreciated most were his concluding remarks.

§         Don’t treat your fax traffic like your voice traffic.

§         Fax has different requirements within an IP world than Voice.

§         CISCO best practices are T.38. (As of the publication of this blog.)

For a detailed transcript about the Cisco Facebook forum click here http://www.facebook.com/CiscoSupportCommunity/posts/10150229459761412