Date: September 29, 1998
Name of group: G1
Team members: Roman Lobkovsky & Craig Mills
Task: #10

Create a faxing station that can receive faxes through the POTS. The faxes will be routed depending on whom the fax is intended for, with a default location for faxes which are not routable. The routing that we plan to implement is either T.30 sub-addressing, or a manual directory type service. The T.30 implementation requires the Data gateway to pass on the extension number dialed. The manual implementation that we are considering is to pass voice to the fax machine. Our server would be a connection between the directory service and the faxing machine. This way someone could call our fax machine and receive a general listing of the people for whom faxes are received. Then they could key in the number and start the fax. We would have to switch modes from voice to fax negotiation and then receive the fax. The advantage of the second implementation is that regular fax machines could address faxes to a particular person. As it is now OCR, T.30 sub-addressing, or manual sorting at the receiving station are the only ways to direct a fax to a particular individual. With either implementation we will convert the fax to a standard picture format, such as GIF. Then we will email the fax to the person in question. We may also sent up a web page of faxes that arrived without using a router feature and therefore could be for anyone.

Upon receiving a call:
Several options for determining the destination of the fax:
If we don't hear the negotiation tones right away:
Try to get the rest of the number (the extension) from the signaling group and/or set up a voice menu to choose or key in a destination for the fax.
Can involve looking up the directory to get everyone whose name starts with a certain letter, for example.
Look up the destination based on the extension.

Negotiate the connection.
If doing T.30 sub-addressing, extract the extension and look up the destination based on that.
Receive the pages.
Convert them to GIF (or another format).
Email the pictures as attachments or put them on a web page, according to the looked up destination.
Could have a default destination if none was provided.
 

The format of the packets from the gateway.
The directory service interface.
Possibly getting extra dialing digits from the signaling controller.
 

Oct 7^th. All relevant standards and have digested the initial requirements
Oct 28^th A working negotiation between the audio packets (fax) and our station
For speed of data/dpi and other required data.
Nov. 4^th Finish coding the audio packets
Nov. 9^th Directory Interface
Nov. 16^th Fax to gif conversion
Nov. 23^rd Email/ web posting of faxes
Nov. 29^th Test/ debug overall functionality
Dec. 10^th Manual routing function (included text to speech and switching from audio to fax)
 

A fax machine which supports T.30 sub-addressing
Faxing standards
Text to voice module for manual fax routing