What is Fax?
Fax is the short for Facsimile. Facsimile is a Latin word meaning make a copy. Fax machines send a
copies of documents to a remote location encoded as electric signals and at the destination these signals are
decoded to get the copy of the documents.
A Fax machine generally has the capacity of a Scanner, Printer and a Modem. Scanner performs the job of creating
the image which has to be sent over the network, Modem performs the job of encoding the copy into network
sendable/receivable signals and Printer does the receive side printing. These Fax machines use the telephone lines
as their signal carriers. These Fax machines are now becoming dated due to the penetration of internet and email
technologies.
Fax Capabilities:
Fax capabilities are determined by several parameters like Group, Transmission rate, Class and Conformance with
International Telecommunications Union.
Group:
The Fax Machines will primarily fall under 4 groups as Group 1, Group 2, Group 3 and Group 4. Group 1 and Group
2 faxes are almost totally obsolete as no more of these machines are manufactured now. The reason could be because
of the time they take to send a single page. Group 1 needs about 6 minutes to transmit a single page and Group 2
machines take about 3 minutes.
Group 3 machines take about 6 seconds to 15 to transmit a single page and these machines conform to ITU-T
recommendations T.30 and T.4. Group 4 machines are designated to operate over 64 kbps digital and ISDN circuits.
Class:
The fax class is determined by the amount of processing a fax modem can handle by offloading it from the
computer.
Compression:
There are two main algorithms used by Fax machines such as Modified Huffman and Modified Read.
Modified Huffman compresses the whitespace saving the amount of data transfer. Modified Read does what Modified
Huffman does and it transmits the data based on code difference between lines, thus saving size of transfer.
What to do Next:
Read about disadvantages of fax machines and decide if you are really looking for a fax machine or may be an email to fax solution.
Compare Email Fax Services and decide which suits you.
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