Subject: Re: Functional requirement for confirmation

From: Michael Spann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 17:53:36 -0700 (PDT)

On Tue, 23 Jun 1998 [email-masked] wrote:

> Crocker-san
> 
> I say we have to think about "content" of confirmation rather than
> "transport".
> If you get incorrect "content" of confirmation by any mechanism, then the
> confirmation is useless.
> 
> What kind of confirmation is required for G3FAX and IFAX?
> Basic requirement is:
> (1)message arrived at recipient
> (2)content of message is readable or printable or processable
> (3)total page receipt
> (4)error page number
> (5)error code
> 
> 
> Regards.
> Toru MAEDA
> CANON Inc.
>

An IFAX confirmation should contain, at minimum, the information you find in
the transaction report from your conventional fax machine.  This includes, but
is not limited to:

1. Status (good, not good, cause of error if not good)
2. Date and time of each attempt
3. Duration of call(s)
4. Number of pages transfered
5. remote identification

This list came from a transaction report from a popular brand fax machine and
is typical of most fax machines.  High end facsimile devices provide quite a
bit more information.

Error status indications should provide some indication of severity or
classification of the failure to assist the sender in knowing whether to
attempt to resubmit the request.  This type of notification seems common in
existing internet protocols.

Automatic retry attempts by an offramp can complicate things a bit.  Customers
who are paying for the fax delivery will want an accurate accounting for each
fax they send, and service providers often want to be able track each phone
call to a work order.  This creates a situation where some pages are
transfered on one phone call and the remainder on another phone call.  The
confirmation scheme needs to have a way to indicate that pages 1-5 were sent
saturday at 11PM and pages 6-9 were finally delivered at 9AM on monday (when
someone put more paper in the machine :) )

The remote identification is extremely useful as a way provide a higher degree
of confidence that the message was truely delivered to the desired
destination.  It is NOT foolproof in most countries on this planet (only a
few) but it does provide a higher degree of confidence.

mike