Dear Ian,

To send a fax message to a particular fax machine, one has to establish a
connection between that machine and the sender (another fax machine or a PC
playing the role of a fax machine). Thus, if your customer wants to send a
fax, his PC has to somehow connect to the fax machine he's trying to send a
fax to (and if he wants to receive a fax, the fax machine which is trying
to send him a message has to connect with his machine, in this case a PC
playing the role of a fax machine thanks to WinFax). Fax machines
communicate with each other using the (dial-up) telephone network. A modem
(actually, a fax/modem) is essential. The customer's ADSL connection with
the Internet is irrelevant; he doesn't use it to connect with fax machines.

The customer CAN use the Internet to receive and send faxes, but then he
doesn't need WinFax. There are services such as e-Fax (www.efax.com) which
can be used. Efax assigns a user a telephone number which fax machines call
to send faxes to. Using e-Fax one does not need a modem, of course, because
they take care of the to/from telephone network calling with other fax
machines.

Hope this helps.  Cheers  -  =  Cheeta Gauba


At 01:04 PM 1/19/2004 +1300, Ian wrote:
>A customer has WinFax Pro 10.03, which he's trying to configure on the PC
>I've just built for him.
>
>He accesses the internet via an ADSL connection through a 4-port router
>which I also supplied.
>
>Here's my (well, his) question: Can he use his router to send and receive
>faxes with WinFax?  (I told you it was a dumb question :--))
>
>He tells me that the WinFax blurb says he needs a 'modem'.  Well, as far
>as I'm concerned, he already has a modem, in the form of the broadband router.
>
>Anyone able to comment?
>
>TX
>
>Ian Porter
>Computer Guys Inc.

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