Inbound Faxes
- Nathaniel Halbrooks
When someone sends a fax to your DID, that fax is received into the FAXStation platform, and queued for delivery to your fax machine connected to your fax CPE device. Some common reasons why you might not be getting those faxes, and steps to resolve:
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FAXStation Platform
This is the fax session between the fax sender on the PSTN to the FAXStation platform
Problem | Solution |
Busy | The FAXStation platform has an abundance of call capacity. As such, busy signals should not happen. If a sender experiences a busy signal when sending to a FAXStation number, a retry should suffice in getting a connection, and could have been a transient load problem. |
Other | If a sender experiences any sort of fax error not attributible to normal calling (busy/no answer/etc), please have them retry. Often times, given fax problems can be present with the sender, receiver, or anywhere in between, the problem can be transient and hard to track down. If the sender has a consisent repeatable problem, please contact our support personnel with specific call examples (date/time/timezone/source/destination) for analysis. |
FAXStation CPE
This is the fax session between your fax machine and the FAXStation CPE
Problem | Solution |
CPE device is offline | Please ensure the FAXStation CPE device is connected to your network via the unit's WAN port, and power is applied. The unit online/offline status can be seen from within the SIPStation/FAXStation portal, as well as by connecting to the CPE device local web interface. On the latest Rev 4 CPE devices, the front 'SYS' LED, when illuminated, indicates the unit is online for service. |
Fax machine never rings | Please ensure your fax machine is connected to the CPE device with a known good RJ11 telephone cable. The cable should connect the 'LINE' port on your fax machine (not the PHONE port) to the appropriate port on your FAXStation CPE device (typically port 1). You can verify which ports are activated by checking the SIPStation/FAXStation portal, as well as the CPE device local web interface. |
Fax machine rings but fax never comes through | Please ensure your fax machine has the 'auto-answer' setting enabled. This ensures when the fax machine gets a "RING" on the telephony port, it knows to pick up the call and try to receive the fax. |
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CPE Web GUI
 Another helpful place to troubleshoot inbound fax problems CPE side is going to be the web GUI on the FAXStation CPE. Follow the steps to login and manage your CPE device on the CPE Web GUI page
Once logged in, you will be given some indications of inbound problems, possibly via errors in the admin section of the device. Specifically, if faxes are unable to be transmitted from the CPE device to your fax machine, your web GUI may display the following notice(s)
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You can also look to the 'Fax Port Status' section of the administrative web GUI for any port specific problems. In the example below, you can see two ports are indicating a backlogged queue with pending faxes that are not going through.
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If the above items do not solve your inbound fax receiving issues, please reach out to our SIPStation/FAXStation support group for assistance.