Internet Fax Machines

Regular everyday people don’t always have a fax machine, but instead have a computer. Most modern computers nowadays have a built in fax/data modem which will allow you to send a fax through the computer. Even then its still slow, and instead you can upload your fax to a website for an internet fax to go through. Its much faster since you are uploading the document by broadband connection. But still if you need to send to a fax number, that will take time if the recipient has a slow fax machine.

Email Fax Technology

Faxing stuff by fax machine is getting more outdated now, as the internet is starting to pick up. You can send a PDF document nearly instantly compared to a fax machine. With a fax machine, you have to dial up the connection, then handshake to agree on a communication method, then finally send the document over via a dial up modem. All that takes time. If you have to send the document to a fax machine, you can email fax it to a fax server which will handle all that pain staking process.

Online Fax Systems

Fax machines are getting outdated and replaced by newer online systems like fax servers. With an online fax, you can send your document by PDF, word doc, or whatever to an internet fax server which will send a fax to your recipient whether she is on another fax machine or on another internet fax server. Its really simple and sometimes a cheaper way to go.

South Africa Faxing Instructions

Ever Got A Black Fax?

A very bad prank involves sending a black page via fax to another fax machine in great number. This would cause the receiving party to have resources such as paper and toner or ink wasted severely possibly to the point where the fax runs out completely. This is similar to a DOS or denial of service attack on the computer.

Early 1900’s Fax

3D Faxing Files

A little while back before the internet started if you wanted to send a file across to another computer on another part of the world, you can fax the file. However it was a very slow method and would require several pages of paper for large files. A software by InfoImaging Technologies would encode the file into an image which could then be faxed. That image could then be decoded into the original file. Noise on the line would cause the file to fail, and files could only be a maximum of 50kb per page faxed. The internet soon made this obsolete.

Internet Faxing

Faxing stuff by internet is now even more popular. Who wants to pay excessive fees to the phone company by making so many long distance phone calls for a fax to go through the phone lines? Also called an online fax, you can upload your fax to a website at broadband speeds and let the fax server take care of all the dialing for sending and receiving faxes.

Early Days of Faxing

Fax machine variants have been around since the World Wars, however they really started picking up from the mid 1970’s before internet fax was invented. They started gaining popularity especially in Japan where they were using TTY devices to send text. It was faster to write Kanji by hand then to type it. So with fax machines they were able to write the words and then send it across by fax machine.

Components to a Fax

Fax machines consist of 3 primary components. Something to scan the document, something to send the document, like a dial up modem, and something like a printer to print the document if you are receiving the fax. If you are sending an email fax, this is not needed. The final requirement is to have power to power the thing up and a phone line to connect the two fax machines together so that they can communicate on the PSTN.