NetGen Channel Newsletter May 2018

Grand Dial Communications and YoubiquITy Cloud

Every gateway and PBX in NetGen’s product line includes an embedded-software agent that enables it to be fully managed by our ITSP customers using our cloud-based system, YoubiquITy. Benefits include:

• Remote Web and Telnet access
• Remote provisioning
• Manage, monitor, and gather statistics
• Provide remote technical support
• Create communications between deployed devices and your proprietary application
• Grant temporary access to a device

Grand Dial Communications, a heavy user of Smart ATA®, has woven YoubiquITy into its operations. Grand Dial is a nationwide information technology support business based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They “provide high-quality, cost-effective, business-class phone and IT services to both business and residential customers throughout the United States.”
We spoke with Bryant Zimmerman, senior systems architect at Grand Dial, to see just how he used YoubiquITy. As he explained, two years ago Grand Dial registered as a YoubiquITy user, which gave Grand Dial credentials. He explained, “When we receive a shipment of Smart ATAs, we connect each one to our in-house network and register it with YoubiquITy. It’s then in Grand Dial’s Cloud. Next, our provisioning server does its thing; the unit is then returned to inventory. Once we are ready to ship the unit, it’s pulled from inventory, re-tested, and shipped to the end user.” Once a Smart ATA is installed, YoubiquITy allows us to maintain the device without worrying about access from our lab. It’s as if our tech is always on site.
To learn more about YoubiquITy, take a look at the User Guide.

Farewell, POTS!
Your customer has decided to convert to a VoIP PBX, or has had one for a while, yet they still have POTS lines for their faxes, and other analog devices. Many service providers, resellers, and distributors actually encourage their customers to keep their POTS lines to satisfy their fax requirements because they do not have an ATA or gateway that delivers acceptable FoIP performance.. The market-leading ATAs and gateways are incapable of successfully managing the G.711 and T.38 fax interoperability, resulting in unsuccessful or dropped fax transmissions. This adds to higher support costs.
Additionally, fax was developed to operate over the PSTN.. The PSTN has a, direct end-to-end connection.. With the addition of the IP infrastructure, the transmission is broken into packets that are routed based on congestion, and can be disassembled and reassembled along the way. Sometimes the fax machines just cannot communicate. You say “POtato”, I say “poTATo”.
To address the market requirements, NetGen developed and patented Smart FoIP®, which is standard on its HX ATAs and MX8A gateways. But why is this development important? After all, it is just another ATA, right? Wrong! Smart FoIP eliminates the two biggest problems associated with Fax over IP (FoIP): the G.711 clock synchronization issue and the late-T.38 re-invite… allowing communication between the two end-point devices to speak the same language… like a translator. They now “get each other”. No other ATA or gateway on the market can make this claim.
But why is this so important? It provides an undeniable cost-benefit to the agent/reseller/service provider and the user as well!
For the agent/reseller/service provider, an ATA that provides success rates at near-PSTN success rates results in lower support costs. It literally becomes a case of “out-of-sight, out-of-mind”, and support staff is not consumed with trouble-shooting a customer’s issues with analog devices, while moving revenue from the ILEC to the service provider. Moreover, without adding POTS lines into the mix, it simplifies vendor management… one less fly in the ointment.
For the end-user, successful fax transmissions over IP results in reduced costs by eliminating the cost of POTS lines. Since a typical business line averages around $30 a month, additional taxes and surcharges. of $10 – $20, an organization with 4 POTS lines, sending 500 pages a month, is paying as much as $250 a month on top of their IP connection. And we cannot forget about those pesky per-minute charges on the phone bill. Waste, waste, waste. Utilizing FoIP can eliminate these costs.
There are clear reasons as to why fax still exists: customers have legacy CPE, compliance with regulations such as HIPPA, PCI-DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, and others do not recognize other data transmission methods, and the recognized security of faxes versus email. By offering your customers ATAs and gateways with Smart FoIP, you can satisfy these requirements and see a noticeable increase in profitability.
We can put POTS in the ground for good, one IP implementation at a time, and let it rest in peace. Farewell POTS, and we thank you! Click Here to learn how to add these versatile products to your arsenal.

Flexibility Features in MX Gateways

NetGen offers a comprehensive line of the MX series of PSTN-IP gateways. Except for the MX-100, which is a 1-, 2-, or 4-span trunking gateway, all are access gateways of 2, 4-, 8-, up to 96-ports of FXS and/or FXO. Remote provisioning and management, of

course, are supported. But there’s much more to this product line.
There’s hardly any gateway-related thing you can’t do with 500 routing rules with methods such as KEEP, REMOVE, ADD, REPLACE, CODEC, RELAY, ROUTE (including to a hunt group), and trunk hunting. Then there’s support for RADIUS, IMS, and MGCP. Another cool feature is custom outbound greeting with second-stage dialing. Then there’s comprehensive VLAN support.
There’s also support for high-availability configurations with redundant power supplies, server clusters, load balancing, as well as active and primary standby.
Oh, yes. We must not forget Smart FoIP®, which is available on certain models in the product line. Contact us now to learn more.

RF 6913

bout five years ago, the SIP Forum’s FoIP Task Group’s RFC 6913 was published by the IETF. It defined and registered with the IANA the “t38” and “pass-through” SIP.FAX media-feature tags to support the registration and pro-active routing of SIP fax calls. Fax calls exclusively routed over IP networks have a much higher chance of success, so knowing it’s a fax call at the point of ingress allows the provider to select an all-IP route.
But to be effective, User Agents (UAs), service providers, and carriers must support the standard. This means that UAs must include the tags when registering, registrars and proxy servers must maintain the tags in their databases and then use them in their routing algorithms.
NetGen would like to know if you’ve heard of RFC 6913 and whether you’ve had any practical experience with this standard. Even if you’ve never heard of it, I’d like to talk with you. But if you have heard of it and work with fax-capable UAs and servers, I’m especially keen to discuss your experience with you.
E-mail support@NetGenCommunications.com to set up a call with Mike Coffee. And thanks.