Technical information

Fax Fundamentals

This section introduces and briefly describes various fundamental concepts that should be thoroughly understood

before you begin administering your VSI-FAX server.

Important terms and concepts

This section defines some important terms and concepts that you should understand before you begin administering

your fax server.

Fax devices

Fax devices can be either single-channel modems or multi-channel fax boards.

There are also three special devices: loopback (lb), sendmail (sm) and Fax on Demand Connector (FoDC).

The loopback device is used to route fax requests back to the originating user's fax inbox.

The sendmail device is used to send faxes as email attachments.

The Fax on Demand Connector device is used to send faxes through Esker on Demand fax provider. The VSI-FAX

server sends fax transmission requests in XML format to a remote Esker on Demand server. The Esker on Demand

server sends the faxes and notifies the originating VSI-FAX server of the fax transmission status. To use the Fax on

Demand connector device, you must specify the hostname of the On Demand server to use, your On Demand

Account ID and password, and then activate the device. You can do this from VSI-FAX Server Administration on

Windows or from a command shell. For more information, refer to Fax on Demand Connector

Classes

Faxes can be sent to either a single physical device or a group of devices called a class. For example, a class could

be a group of devices dedicated to long distance calls, or a group of devices used only for high-volume fax requests.

A class can only contain physical devices; it cannot contain other classes. However, any device can be included in

one or more classes. When a fax is sent to a class, it will be routed to the first available device in that class.

Queues

Each device and class has a queue. Pending fax requests are held in the queue until the job is completed.

Users

To send or receive faxes, a person must be registered in the fax server user database. User information is the most

basic and unique information about each fax user, such as username and password. Most fax settings and privileges

are actually controlled via profiles.

License

You need a VSI-FAX license to install and run VSI-FAX Server. There are various types of VSI-FAX licenses:

Evaluation license (i.e. "eval"): This is the license installed when you enter no license information during

setup. It allows you to test the product and see if it matches your needs. You can use this license during a

limited period of 30 days. Once the evaluation license has expired, you can reactivate it with another time-

limited evaluation license or with a regular production license requested from Esker.