Announcing New High-Availability FoIP and VoIP Technology

August 2020 - Atlanta, GA – babyTEL (Montreal), Copia International (Chicago), and Commetrex (Atlanta) have developed a high-availability technology they call “Active-Active Redundancy.” The three technology partners claim that Active-Active technology delivers inbound availability for fax-over-IP calls (FoIP) in excess of 99.999%. Although the technology is currently being used for inbound FoIP, it applies equally well to voice (VoIP).

The solution marries technologies from each of the three partners:

• babyTEL provides the T.38 real-time FoIP access and carrier services.
• Copia provides the fax server (CopiaFacts).
• Commetrex provides its BladeWare HMP telephony platform on which CopiaFacts is based.

The inbound process begins with babyTEL simultaneously delivering a call to two (or more) redundant servers, which can be in different cities or even countries. The key concept is for one of the Copia servers to immediately accept the call and the other to delay accepting the call…say for 200-milliseconds. The babyTEL service acknowledges the first-arriving call acceptance and cancels the other.

To determine whether to answer a call immediately or wait, CopiaFacts utilizes a special feature Commetrex added to BladeWare, according to Mike Coffee, Commetrex’ CEO. “BladeWare will deliver calls to client applications in either the alerting or connected state. So, when a call is delivered to the CopiaFacts server, it can examine call-related data to determine whether to accept the call. In this application, each server will be assigned to immediately accept either odd- or even-numbered calls, delaying acceptance of the other half, which, of course, are immediately accepted by the other server, guaranteeing that each server receives half the calls. If one of the servers goes off line, all calls will be awarded to the remaining on-line server, half of them immediately, half in 200-milliseconds.”

“High-Availability deployments have been available for some time, but they have been extremely complex to develop and deploy. This one, in spite of the complexities introduced by three companies working together, is as simple to deploy as adding one more server,” noted Steve Hersee, CEO of Copia International. Hersee continued: “Customers can ensure their mission-critical telephony applications will continue to work in the face of component malfunction, natural disaster, or a software failure. The solution also addresses business continuity needs for disaster recovery when deployed in a geographically diverse configuration.”.

“But none of this matters if the FoIP call isn’t successfully delivered,” added Stephen Dorsey, CEO of babyTEL. “We deliver call-completion rates exceeding that of comparable services over legacy networks, and we do it using industry-standard T.38 real-time fax over the Internet.”

About babyTEL
Headquartered in Montreal, and founded in 1991, babyTEL develops in-house, advanced telecommunication services for its VoIP “triple play” of voice, fax, and modem services over the Internet. babyTEL’s customized suite of services are delivered to residential and corporate customers in over 7,000 locations across the U.S. and Canada. babyTEL services include Cloud Business Phone, Home Phone, FoIP, and Electronic Fax and are offered through its agents and reseller partners in the U.S. and Canada. To meet challenging needs, babyTEL customizes and expands its Services using its own development resources. Our partners, end-users, and network-support teams benefit from the availability of in-house developers for effective and timely support.

About Commetrex
Founded in 1990, Commetrex Corporation provides industry-leading fax technologies to telecom-equipment OEMs and VoIP service providers. Commetrex has unrivaled expertise in fax-over-IP (FoIP) technology. Its FaxTap for SIP and the BladeWare™ telephony server with Smart FoIP® are moving FoIP reliability to a higher level. Commetrex is expanding its product line to offer the same technology excellence to the OEM developing voice-response and messaging systems with BladeWare Studio and BladeWare VXi. For more information on Commetrex, visit commetrex.com.

About Copia International
Founded in 1987, Copia International is an innovator in the communications solutions software market. Daily, thousands of customers worldwide use CopiaFacts software suite of FaxFacts, VoiceFacts and E-MailFacts to send and receive information by fax, voice, or e-mail. Copia holds the patents for its one-call fax-retrieval and mail-merge-to-fax technology. www.copia.com

Do your faxes still go bump in the night? Let us design a Spoo-tacular Fax Over IP system for you!

Nobody hears screech's and boop's with fax anymore... it's all over IP!  This Halloween let Copia design you a Fax-Over-IP system to die for...



Call sales at (800) 689-8898 for more information!

Copia International Partners with TE-Systems

We are pleased to announce that Copia International has partnered with TE-Systems Inc., and now fully supports TE-Systems XCAPI VoIP and FoIP ports in CopiaFacts version 8.2.

TE-Systems has long experience in IP Telephony, and supporting XCAPI gives CopiaFacts access to the huge range of IP telephony hardware and worldwide IP Providers which have been tested for use with XCAPI. A full Interoperability List is available from Copia sales department, and detailed configuration notes are also available for all the major switch types, as well as for configuring virtual machine environments. XCAPI VoIP and FoIP ports can also be integrated with Dialogic Diva Server boards in the same system.

The COPIAFACTS server engine has an interface module for XCAPI which supports the full range of features available with other supported hardware and IP ports. For fax, we support both XCAPI Softfax which enhances fax transmission over VoIP circuits, and of course full T.38 fax-over-IP. For voice, we support not only all the usual CopiaFacts IVR capabilities but also advanced features such as call linking, and tone, energy and human talker detection.

For more information about using XCAPI ports in your CopiaFacts system, please call your salesperson here at Copia on 800-689-8898 or 630-388-6900.

CSS and HTML e-mails - a great guide to navigating in-line CSS

Add some style to your emails - CSS is, of course, fully supported by E-MailFacts. But what are some do's and don'ts when it comes to Gmail? Here's a great guide to help you through it! bit.ly/1JE3o9s

The POODLE Exploit and CopiaFacts E-Mail

This posting affects only early adopters of CopiaFacts version 8.2, and then only those who

• use SSL/TLS to log in securely to their own ISP or corporate mailserver to send CopiaFacts e-mail (the 'via ISP' option), or
• use SSL/TLS with version 8.2 of EMDIRECT, which sends system notifications via a specified mail server.

The POODLE exploit renders the old SSL 3.0 authentication mechanism insecure, and should not be used unless the server you are connected to does not support the more modern TLS authentication.

In 8.2 builds up to build 8.2.0.42, CopiaFacts allowed authenticated connection using any SSL or TLS version supported by the server.  In 8.2.0.42, as soon as the implications of POODLE became apparent, we changed the default so that only TLS is allowed, but provided an override to enable SSL 3.0.

From build 8.2.0.43, CopiaFacts begins a secure e-mail transmission by using TLS only, but if the server connection fails, we automatically drop back to allow SSL, but using a fallback mode which is designed to prevent the POODLE exploit from intercepting the transmission.  The override option to allow basic SSL 3.0 has been removed.

The default CopiaFacts e-mail uses MX lookup and connection to the recipient's mail server.  Authentication is not used in this case and the considerations of this posting do not apply.  SSL/TLS is not used in CopiaFacts 8.1 or earlier so these versions are also not affected.

Thank You Veterans

babyTEL, Copia International, and Commetrex Team for High-Availability Breakthrough

January 23, 2014 – Atlanta, GA – babyTEL (Montreal), Copia International (Chicago), and Commetrex (Atlanta) have developed a high-availability technology they call “Active-Active Redundancy.”  The three technology partners claim that Active-Active technology delivers inbound availability for fax-over-IP calls (FoIP) in excess of 99.999%.  Although the technology is currently being used for inbound FoIP, it applies equally well to voice (VoIP).

The solution marries technologies from each of the three partners:

• babyTEL provides the T.38 real-time FoIP access and carrier services.
• Copia provides the fax server (CopiaFacts).
• Commetrex provides its BladeWare HMP telephony platform on which CopiaFacts is based

The inbound process begins with babyTEL simultaneously delivering a call to two (or more) redundant servers, which can be in different cities or even countries.  The key concept is for one of the Copia servers to immediately accept the call and the other to delay accepting the call…say for 200-milliseconds.  The babyTEL service acknowledges the first-arriving call acceptance and cancels the other. 

To determine whether to answer a call immediately or wait, CopiaFacts utilizes a special feature Commetrex added to BladeWare, according to Mike Coffee, Commetrex’ CEO.  “BladeWare will deliver calls to client applications in either the alerting or connected state.  So, when a call is delivered to the CopiaFacts server, it can examine call-related data to determine whether to accept the call.  In this application, each server will be assigned to immediately accept either odd- or even-numbered calls, delaying acceptance of the other half, which, of course, are immediately accepted by the other server, guaranteeing that each server receives half the calls.  If one of the servers goes off line, all calls will be awarded to the remaining on-line server, half of them immediately, half in 200-milliseconds.” 

“High-Availability deployments have been available for some time, but they have been extremely complex to develop and deploy.  This one, in spite of the complexities introduced by three companies working together, is as simple to deploy as adding one more server,” noted Steve Hersee, CEO of Copia International.  Hersee continued: “Customers can ensure their mission-critical telephony applications will continue to work in the face of component malfunction, natural disaster, or a software failure. The solution also addresses business continuity needs for disaster recovery when deployed in a geographically diverse configuration.”.

“But none of this matters if the FoIP call isn’t successfully delivered,” added Stephen Dorsey, CEO of babyTEL.  “We deliver call-completion rates exceeding that of comparable services over legacy networks, and we do it using industry-standard T.38 real-time fax over the Internet.”

About babyTEL

Headquartered in Montreal, and founded in 1991, babyTEL develops in-house, advanced telecommunication services for its VoIP “triple play” of voice, fax, and modem services over the Internet. babyTEL’s customized suite of services are delivered to residential and corporate customers in over 7,000 locations across the U.S. and Canada. babyTEL services include Cloud Business Phone, Home Phone, FoIP, and Electronic Fax and are offered through its agents and reseller partners in the U.S. and Canada. To meet challenging needs, babyTEL customizes and expands its Services using its own development resources. Our partners, end-users, and network-support teams benefit from the availability of in-house developers for effective and timely support.

About Commetrex

Founded in 1990, Commetrex Corporation provides industry-leading fax technologies to telecom-equipment OEMs and VoIP service providers. Commetrex has unrivaled expertise in fax-over-IP (FoIP) technology. Its FaxTap for SIP and the BladeWare™ telephony server with Smart FoIP® are moving FoIP reliability to a higher level. Commetrex is expanding its product line to offer the same technology excellence to the OEM developing voice-response and messaging systems with BladeWare Studio and BladeWare VXi. For more information on Commetrex, visit commetrex.com.

About Copia International

Founded in 1987, Copia International is an innovator in the communications solutions software market.  Daily, thousands of customers worldwide use CopiaFacts software suite of FaxFacts, VoiceFacts and E-MailFacts to send and receive information by fax, voice, or e-mail.  Copia holds the patents for its one-call fax-retrieval and mail-merge-to-fax technology.  www.copia.com 

            ###

Commetrex Contact

Marilyn Troup

Director, Marketing Communications

Commetrex Corporation

Direct: 770-407-6032

Fax: 770-242-7353

Email: marketing@commetrex.com
Web: commetrex.com

babyTEL Contact

Dana Salman

Marketing Manager

babyTEL

Direct: 514-448-4084

Fax: 514-879-8586

Email: dsalman@babytel.net

Web: babytel.net

Copia International, Ltd. Contact

Dorothy Flanagan

VP of Marketing

Copia International, Ltd.

Direct: 800-516-5189

Fax: 641-741-6032

Email: dorothy@copia.com

Web: copia.com

Seasons Greetings

We hope you have a peaceful holiday season.  Copia offices will be closed until Monday January 6th but we will try to respond to any urgent support e-mail over the holiday.

Watch this space for a series of postings describing new features we have been working on for the next major CopiaFacts release, version 8.2.  We will start to introduce these features early in the New Year.

Fax Aware ATA

NetGen comes through with IP.fax media-feature tag on its Smart ATA's - One step closer to cutting the POTS cord! http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20130528-905409.html "More needs to be done, but together, these initiatives will set the stage for the 'PSTN cord' to be cut," added Steve Hersee, CEO of Copia International, a Smart ATA user. Hersee continued, "The stage is set, but now the industry needs players: equipment vendors that support RFC6913 and carriers that use it in their routing decisions. Copia is pleased that NetGen is the first in the ATA industry to announce support for this significant industry milestone. We intend to lobby our service-provider partners to support it."

Enhancements for FFVIEWER

After a recent set of enhancements for FFBC, our next target has been the fax viewer.  Again the principal objective has been to improve ease and speed of use.

The list of enhancements this time includes:

• The mail selection dialog which is used to select incoming faxes for viewing has several new features.  You can now sort entries on individual columns, and filter contents to find items faster.  The preview window has also been enhanced to allow viewing of any page of the document.
• For dragging the image on the main window, we have exchanged the functions of the two mouse buttons.  The left mouse button now does a simple drag, moving the picture at the same rate and the same distance that you move the mouse.  The right mouse drag now does the accellerated drag which used to be done by the left button, where the amount of mouse movement controls the speed of movement of the picture.  Using the right mouse button you can quickly skip from the top to the bottom of a page without the need to do mutliple drag-release operations.  And in the new version this also works when annotations are visible.
• In case you find the exchanged mouse button functions confusing, we have provided a 'settings' option to retain the original configuration!
• For users who need to position annotations accurately, either for their own or for bureau clients' customization applications, we have greatly increased the ease of working with annotations.  Instead of just a simple annotation number, the annotation header now includes full position and size information, continuously updated as you move or resize the annotation, as well as much more information in the hint window:

• If you prefer to set your annotation  position and size 'by numbers' there is a new item on the annotation menu which brings up a window where you can enter exact position and size:

Finally, there are several small enhancements, including the ability to undo an annotation move after you have clicked on it with an unsteady hand and found it in a slightly different place.  And some minor fixes which are detailed in the reference manual, along with improved documentation of annotations and other FFVIEWER features.  See http://www.copia.com/support/refmanual8/index.html?annotation.htm.

These changes are in build 8.1.0.123.

Copia partners with babyTEL to provide Fax over IP service

Last week we announced the successful completion of interoperability testing of CopiaFacts with babyTEL Fax over IP (FoIP) services.

You can find background information and links in the press release here.  Please contact Copia sales if you would like to evaluate FoIP through babyTel on your CopiaFacts fax server.

Enhancements for the FFBC Broadcast Manager

Added up over all CopiaFacts customers, it is likely that a similar number of broadcast faxes and e-mails are sent from FFBC as are sent by larger users from Job Administration.  We have recognized this by upgrading and enhancing FFBC to introduce some of the features enjoyed by Job Administration users. The basic structure of the program is unchanged, and will remain familiar to current FFBC users, but hopefully we have made it easier and quicker to use.

The only elements that have been removed are the job owner and ID fields for the legacy job management system (you can still enter this information in the template editor) and the counts of multiple .1 .2 .3 files making up a single document, which have been replaced by more useful fields showing the file size.  The file size field enables you to see at a glance how long each broadcast item is likely to take to transmit.

Among the many improvements are:

• A new document selection dialog, which makes it easier to select individual files for broadcasting.
• The ability to pick a non-TIF document to be broadcast and have it pre-converted to fax format.  For PDF documents, this is done directly in FFBC: other document types are passed to Document Converter for pre-conversion.  You can also convert high-resolution TIF files to standard resolution from the same document selection dialog, and view both original and converted documents.
• The OmitListHeader option, which treats the first row of the broadcast list as a header instead of one to be faxed or e-mailed, has been extended with the CreateBCXVars option, which causes 'BCX' variables to be generated from the column names.  So you can now refer to the faxnumber as @BCX_FAXNO as well as @BCF1 if you have a header row which names its column as 'FAXNO'.
• You no longer have to manually edit commands like $fax_phone in the FS template.  Instead, you can right click a column header in the broadcast list and select 'use for fax number': this will automatically set up a $fax_phone command referencing the column you have selected and right-clicked.  The same method can be used to set up voice and e-mail broadcasts by selecting the column.  A new box on the Broadcast page confirms the type of broadcast that has been selected and what list column contains the destination.
• The columns you have picked for phone, e-mail, and recipient name are identified by different colors in the broadcast list display.  This feature has also been added in JOBADMIN.
• Checkboxes are provided for the De-Dupe and OmitListHeader and CreateBCXVars options: no need to remember the FFBC_OPTIONS syntax.
• There's a new button to open the selected user profile, in case you need to edit retry parameters or other settings.
• FFBC can now set the enhanced broadcast scheduling options introduced last year.  You can set up a schedule for times of day between which a broadcast can be sent, and you can optionally specify that these times are to be based on the time zone derived from the area or country code of the destination phone number.  And you are no longer limited to setting times in quarter-hour increments.  If you want a broadcast to start at 8:23, you can do that (and in JOBADMIN).

Along with all these enhancements we have re-tested everything and fixed a few minor bugs and cosmetic issues along the way.

Finally the documentation has been rewritten to include all the new features: you can find it at: http://www.copia.com/support/refmanual8/index.html?ffbc.htm.  The new features are in build 8.1.0.122.

Smart ways to improve system throughput

This post is about a CopiaFacts utility you may not yet have discovered, DNSUPD.  It provides you with new ways to reduce wasted time on failed faxes (and e-mails), by automating the collection of bad and sub-standard destinations for your do-not-send list. The basic DNSUPD program just updates a do-not-send file, as you might guess from its name, but that's only the start of its cleverness.

DNSUPD will also scan your daily log files looking for particular failure codes, and automatically add the destinations to either your main do-not-send list or a do-not-send list you reserve for these failures. Why keep trying numbers that have already been reported as invalid, but which your colleagues (or your service bureau customers) include in send lists even after they are known to fail?

The program will pull out the numbers for specific outcome codes or outcome classes, from a batch of daily log files which you can select by date. Users of the Job Administration feature can also use DNSUPD to scan completed jobs in the same way. If one of the failures has later been successful on a retry, it is automatically excluded from the scan. So you have a simple and reliable way to avoid wasting fax attempts on destinations that always fail.

As well as faxes that fail because of bad numbers, we are also finding that lower telephone line quality is causing faxes to go through successfully only at lower speeds. DNSUPD can help you here also.  First, you need to set up Variable Groups so that you retry at lower speeds any failures to train at a higher speed.  Just doing that can greatly increase completion rates, but you will still waste resources on unnecessary retries.  But DNSUPD, in its scans of log files or completed jobs, will pick out the highest successful baud rate for each fax destination, and add the destinations which only work at reduced speed to an action list. The action list is then used automatically to reduce the baud rate for those destinations on future faxes, so you do not waste time even trying baud rates which you know are going to fail.

DNSUPD is described in detail in the help file here.  You can experiment with different settings by letting it scan and viewing what numbers it suggests adding, either to a do-not-send list or to an action list. You can do this until you are happy with the settings, without making any changes to the index files until you have the right balance.  And then DNSUPD has yet another time-saving trick: it can pop up a window with your chosen settings in the format of a command-line string, ready for you to paste in either to a job administration end-of-job task list or into your regular monthly housekeeping operations.

When you are ready to try out DNSUPD, make sure you get the current build (8.1.0.117) or later, which has all the latest features described above.

Perfectly Personalized PDFs

In the latest CopiaFacts build, 8.1.0.113, we have added the ability to personalize PDF e-mail attachments with overlaid text, just as you can do with a graphical cover sheet for fax.  You can use the CopiaFacts fax viewer to load directly a monochrome image of a PDF file, and then position annotations with both variable text and images such as handwritten signatures.

We have a new file type, GPT, which is similar to the GCT file except that the 'watermark' file is a PDF, not a TIF.  When a GPT file is used as an e-mail attachment, CopiaFacts will create a personalized PDF applying fixed text, variables from your broadcast list, or any other information you want to add for the e-mail recipient. Annotations can have colored fonts, borders and backgrounds, but otherwise are similar to the familiar customizations that you probably use already for faxes.  Overlaid text supports text at an angle, transparent and boxed text, and a simple set of HTML tags.  Fonts can either be the standard PDF fonts, or you can use most Windows fonts (including Unicode fonts) that can be 'subsetted' and embedded in the PDF.

In the same way that you use a GCT/GTT to flow ASCII text files onto fax cover sheets, you can also flow text files onto PDF templates, providing a better-looking result than simply attaching a plain text file to an e-mail.

This new feature provides a simple and quick alternative to setting up a mail-merge to produce customized documents in an e-mail broadcast.  For full details, follow this link to the CopiaFacts reference manual.

And the winner is ....

We recently invited CopiaFacts users to send in a screen shot showing how long their CopiaFacts system had been running continuously.  The winning system had been running an incredible 398 days:

Many congratulations to our winner, Pete Petersen of LexJet,
who sent in the screenshot above, and who wins a free extension to CopiaFacts maintenance for LexJet.   


The CopiaFacts system at LexJet sends incoming faxes direct to employees' e-mail inboxes as PDFs, making it easy for their employees to receive faxes.  It is also used by sales reps sending quotes, sales orders and invoices direct from the LexJet ERP system.  

Pete tells us that their CopiaFacts system has enabled LexJet to eliminate fax machines, increase employee productivity, and enhance their customer experience.  And now we know that it can also run uninterrupted for three hundred and ninety-eight days and counting!

Even though the contest has now closed, if your system can beat this total, please send the screen shot anyway to prove it - we will publish your record and congratulate you here!