More techno-crap!

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OK, as I have said before, I'm doing some serious upgrades to my home network and since I'm not perfect (yet) I could use some help.Well, I'm trying to add Fax capabilities to my network but I don't want to have everything running through one computer that has to be on all the time. The point of the newtwork I'm building is that any computer can just turn on and have access to everything, network storage, printers, scanners and fax. So far I've got almost everything worked out, I havea nice 500GB external hard drive with Ethernet to connect to the network and two USB ports for printer/scanner networking. But the fax thing has me a bit stuck.I've been looking at Linksys products such as this. Does anyone have any opinion on this or some experience to help me, because it would be greatly appreciated.

So you'd be getting a VoIP account, including a telephone number, bill, and analog (POTS) interface to support a fax machine?Now that it's so easy to send documents as e-mail attachments, I'm not sure what the point of faxing is.And what do you feed the newts?

Well see this is why I need help. I don't want to connect a fax machine to the network, I have Fax software that can be installed on every computer and I just need a way of connecting an ordinary phone line to the network without having to go through a specific computer with a modem. I want a phone line connected to the network so that any computer can send faxes and receive them and print them out on any printer.This is for my dad's business mainly but I want it functional should it ever be used for other purposes, we have a fax machine but its so old that it has no way of interfacing with our computers.

What you are trying to do sounds way too complicated, and I think there's some confusion about the telephone line. The device you're talking about does not connect to a phone line from the phone company; it provides a telephone line to to run things like analog telephones and fax machines. It depends on your network's being connected to your ISP. It uses VoIP. Somewhere out there there needs to be a gateway that gets rung up when someone calls your phone number; the gateway converts the regular telephone stuff to and from IP packets.There may be software that runs on your PC that will take the Fax IP traffic that comes to your PC over the network, from the gateway, into a document, and vice-versa. I'm not sure how that works.You'd be better off, I think, getting a Web-based fax service, like this one (this is not an endoresement...it's just the first one that Google spat out). They provide a personal phone number, and a sane way to manage Fax traffic.

When the phone line comes to my computer there is the little thingy that splits the normal telephone cable and the DSL cable. From what I've read, the DSL cable can't transfer fax information. So the normal phone line has to be connected to a modem directly in a computer to get faxes, but I want any computer to get fax signals through the network without having a specific computer on 24/7 for the faxes to pass through

Ah fuck it.

There's some confusion going on here.

You have an analog (POTS) phone line that has a DSL signal on it. The DSL signal goes to the DSL modem, and regular old phone stuff goes through the filter to your telephones and/or fax machine (if you had one).

The box you pointed out kind of does the opposite of what you want to do. It lets you connect an analog phone or fax machine to your VoIP telephone number. Then you'd have a VoIP phone line that would look to your telephone (or modem or fax) just like your regular analog phone line. Basically, same shit, different phone number.

What you seem to want is a fax server, which connects to the analog phone line, and puts out packets on your network that some computer would collect and store as a file equivalent of the fax. You could do the same thing much more simply and cheaply with an ordinary fax modem, but it would only collect faxes on the one computer it was connected to.

A fax server seems like a complicated and expensive mess to deal with, unless you get a lot of faxes, and insist on being able to see them from everywhere when the arrive. It would be a lot easier just to get a physical fax machine, or just plug the phone line into your fax modem.

An alternative, as I mentioned, is to get a Web-based fax service. Then you can get to your faxes from any computer, anywhere, as long as you have the password to your account. It's a cheap and easy solution. That's what I'd do.

Ah bog-off Bob with your techno crap.. Sorry no, I'll try to be helpful; what you do is you plug the splitter up something that begins with the same letter and rhymes (HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAA!)

Well you're just a useless piece of poopy!!!

Its best to keep it in here, it might offend the hugglers and cugglers.

And the loved-up kissy snugglers.. poopy arse yourself, begorrah! (oh Jaysus, what have I started?!)

BOB! are you taking the piss out the hugglers and snugglers????? I count myself among them and as such if its true you WILL be punished........growl

> without having a specific computer on 24/7

You want to have a computer network where there's not at least one computer on all the time? Then you need to get a stand-alone fax machine or you need to use a Web-based fax service.

Obviously there's not a mail server running on the network.

Starfish > Screw you Molly!!!Angel > I'd never!!Steve > I love y... eh, thanks. I may get one of those web accounts, thanks for the link and the info.

Ah lets make up; would you like a cockle or a mussel?

Alive alive-o?