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OpenText RightFax over IP (FoIP) and SIP Trunk in faxing

RightFax and Fax over IP (FoIP): Complementary IP communication technology

Whether it is a company initiative or a government mandate, more and more organizations are leveraging IP for their communication services. The benefits are clear: providing a future-proof, IP infrastructure for centralized communications to save money and increase flexibility.

While the move to Voice over IP (VoIP) is in full swing, organizations often overlook an important part of the IP movement: Fax over IP (FoIP), faxing in an IP environment.

VoIP is a technology that is meant to optimize voice traffic over an IP network, wheras FoIP is meant to optimize fax traffic. While the two exist on the same IP network, they use very different protocols to transmit voice versus fax packets of information along the network.

FoIP is software-based technology that leverages your existing Voice over IP network and eliminates the need for hardware to support communication with your on-premises RightFax fax server. Leveraging FoIP allows organizations to provide a truly Unified Communications (UC) strategy that includes voice, email, multimedia and fax.

When does FoIP make sense?

  • You’re transitioning or have transitioned to VoIP, but you are still using TDM or analog faxing
  • You seek the flexibility and savings associated with virtualizing RightFax
  • Your UC strategy currently does not include fax
  • You need to make faxing more efficient within your organization

Benefits of implementing FoIP:

  • Leverage your existing VoIP network for flexibility and to reduce costs
  • Reduce telephone expense
  • Maximize existing network resources and infrastructure
  • Simplify disaster recovery and high availability for faxing

RightFax and SIP Trunking

Businesses need to minimize operational costs such as installing, configuring and maintain physical phone lines and PBX connections for each office. RightFax supports SIP trunking to send and receive faxes using remote phone lines accessed via the Internet. Companies that choose SIP trunking for fax and FoIP can deploy RightFax without in-house fax boards, fax gateways or PSTN lines.

Instead of a physical trunk of wires for PSTN lines, SIP trunking provides a virtual trunk over the Internet to PSTN lines. A session border controller (SBC) manages communications between RightFax and the phone equipment in the cloud. RightFax supports SBCs from vendors such as Dialogic and Cisco.

For a complete list of compatible and interoperable solutions, please reference the Dialogic SR140 Interoperability Guide.