An analog fax phone adapter (ATA) is a tool that permits you to use a conventional fax machine to ship faxes utilizing an Internet connection. Sometimes known as a fax adapter, fax jack, or fax bridge, an ATA fax makes it straightforward to modernize your workplace communications whereas nonetheless utilizing the gear you are acquainted with and, in some instances, want to make use of.
In the United States and lots of different nations, governments have given telecommunications suppliers the inexperienced mild to cease sustaining conventional telephone strains. In different phrases, landlines are being phased out in favor of extra trendy applied sciences, comparable to fiber optics. Once this occurs in your space, analog faxes will not work with out an ATA.
I’ll clarify which conventional faxes do not work over the Internet, how an ATA fax works, the different sorts obtainable, and the way to decide on one which’s proper to your wants.
How an ATA fax works
An ATA fax machine acts as a translator between two completely different applied sciences: the general public switched phone community (PSTN) and the Internet. The fax was designed for phone strains that transmit analog alerts. The Internet transmits digital knowledge referred to as packets. The two transmission strategies are usually not appropriate.
Let’s dive a bit of deeper into each applied sciences so you may see how an ATA fax offers the lacking hyperlink and permits any older fax machine to ship digital faxes.
A fax works the identical means as a phone, sending analog alerts over telephone strains, however as an alternative of changing voice right into a sign, the fax converts a picture into alerts that may be transmitted.
The fax scans any doc you enter, interprets the doc into a picture, after which converts it into audio tones despatched over the telephone strains. People born earlier than 2000 will keep in mind the beeps and boops {that a} dial-up modem makes—these are the audio tones I’m speaking about.
Once the audio sign arrives on the different finish, the receiving fax machine converts these alerts again into a visible format after which prints the unique picture.
While this works completely when utilizing a phone line, which is designed to hold analog alerts, issues are a bit of completely different when utilizing the Internet, which transmits digital knowledge quite than analog alerts.
That’s why you may’t ship a fax from an analog machine over the Internet with out a “translator” of some sort; it simply does not know the right way to create knowledge packets and so there’s nothing the Internet can ship to different fax machines.
This is the place an ATA fax is available in. It takes the analog alerts that your fax machine creates from the unique visible picture and interprets them into knowledge packets that may be despatched over the Internet. Once the information packets attain the opposite finish, they’re then translated again into a visible format that may be printed.
Installing an ATA fax
Although fax ATAs might range barely from mannequin to mannequin, they usually resemble small bins with three sockets on the again. One is for the ability twine and is normally labeled “Power” or typically “DC 5V” to indicate the kind of energy it makes use of.
Another socket is for the cable that connects the ATA to the fax and appears like a traditional phone socket you’ll use with a landline. This could also be labeled “Fax” or “Telephone”. In some instances, there could also be a couple of, which suggests you may join your gadget to a number of faxes on the identical time.
There’s one other jack that additionally seems to be like a conventional landline jack (solely greater), and that is used to connect with the Internet. It could also be labeled “Internet”, “Ethernet”, or “WAN/LAN”. If it is labeled “Internet,” you may join it on to your router. If not, it’s possible you’ll have to plug it into your laptop, assuming your laptop has some form of Ethernet port.
It ought to work the identical it doesn’t matter what sort of port you could have. The solely distinction is whether or not the ATA connects on to the Internet or whether or not it connects to the Internet via your laptop as an middleman.
Since every of those sockets has a special sort of cable that ought to solely match the respective port, it will take a number of effort to get it incorrect: all it’s a must to do is make sure that the proper cable is plugged into the proper socket, and also you’re normally good to go .
How to pick the right fax ATA
Some fax ATAs will work higher for sure use instances and completely different enterprise sizes. Some of the the best analog telephone adapters will work with landline faxes, telephones and different legacy communications applied sciences.
If you solely want one ATA fax for a house workplace, you may most likely be advantageous with a easy one-port ATA that permits you to hook up with only one fax. Look for one that’s gadget unbiased and makes use of an open communications protocol, which means it could work with any sort of fax machine and any sort of laptop.
Most small companies can get away with utilizing a single ATA port, until they ship and obtain a number of faxes and want to have the ability to use a number of faxes on the identical time.
If that is the case for you, selecting a multiport fax adapter that permits you to hook up with a number of faxes could also be a good suggestion, and it’s possible you’ll need to think about one which connects to telephones and faxes on the identical time. If you need to transfer your communications to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) however nonetheless need to use analog landline and fax, this can be a sensible choice.
DOWNLOAD this function comparability of VoIP options from TechRepublic Premium
For giant organizations and people managing a unified communications surroundings with Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking, a complicated answer could be the smartest selection right here.
In this case, you may need to search for a system that gives ATA fax capabilities and likewise permits you to make Internet-based telephone calls. This is just like how a conventional landline Private Branch Exchange (PBX) works, however as an alternative of utilizing the PSTN, it makes use of the Internet.
These units do every little thing an ATA fax does, plus they allow you to join quite a lot of conventional landline telephones to the Internet for VoIP calls. If you could have a contemporary VoIP telephone system, this opens the door to a variety of helpful name administration options, together with name forwarding, name ready, and superior safety protocols.
ATA fax codec choices
In normal, codecs are software program algorithms used to compress, encode and decode audio alerts for transmission over digital networks. For fax transmission, codecs should deal with picture knowledge quite than simply voice.
This is the place the aforementioned “translation” course of is available in. The ATA fax can convert the audio tones generated by your fax machine into digital knowledge that may be despatched over the Internet.
There are quite a few fax codecs, the three most typical are T.30, T.38 and G711, which can also be a highly regarded VoIP codec. Let’s have a look at every codec and when it is sensible to make use of it.
- T.30 It’s designed for use over an analog telephone line and works nice when you ship faxes the standard means. It will not work for VoIP faxing until you could have an ATA that may translate the alerts to be appropriate with a T.38 protocol.
- T.38 it’s maybe probably the most used fax codec and is acknowledged by most machines. In normal, it has very low bandwidth, can deal with latency delays of as much as one second, and has failsafes to stop packet loss. However, given the kind of sign created by T.38 and the best way it travels over the PSTN, issues with fax high quality can typically happen.
- G.711 it’s just like T.38, however makes use of far more bandwidth as a result of it converts alerts into audio packets. This works with most machines, however has a a lot larger danger of packet loss than T.38.
The easy various to utilizing an ATA fax
One solution to get round utilizing an ATA fax machine is to modify to a online fax service. You might have to buy an ATA fax machine if you’re decided to make use of a fax machine or multifunction printer, however with on-line fax companies you do not want these machines in any respect.
With these companies, individuals can ship and obtain faxes from their e mail, telephone, pill, laptop computer – nearly any gadget linked to the web will work. The supplier is accountable for sustaining all of the infrastructure wanted to ship/obtain faxes, so so long as you check in to the service, you are able to ship faxes.
For people, there are light-weight apps that allow you to ship a fax out of your iPhone, in addition to free on-line fax companies which you could entry via your browser. Free fax choices are nice when you not often have to ship faxes. Paid choices are a lot better if it is advisable retailer, label, and retrieve faxes later.
For companies, the primary consideration when switching to on-line faxing is compliance. Any respected on-line enterprise fax service will likely be safe, however might not adjust to privateness and safety laws.
For instance, not all fax companies are HIPAA compliant. Some suppliers might not supply all of the options you require, and a few that do are usually not but prepared to signal a enterprise affiliate settlement, making the service non-compliant.
Therefore, if your organization has compliance duties past the norm, it’s positively a good suggestion to make sure that any on-line fax software program you choose meets all of the required requirements for knowledge encryption, entry management, and so forth.
Switching to on-line fax is not going to be a everlasting selection. In the United States, landline infrastructure is on the best way out. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) stated that telephone suppliers are usually not required to keep up outdated PSTN strains, so long as they provide a viable various.
The phase-out is already underway. An ATA will assist you to proceed utilizing your fax machines and landline units as regular, no matter when landlines are phased out in your space.
