T.37 is an
ITU
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU)In the other common languages of the ITU:
*
* is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established ...
standard which deals with sending
fax
Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other out ...
messages using email. It is also referred to as "Internet fax" or "Store-forward-fax".
A fax machine supporting T.37 will send a fax to an email address by converting the document to a
TIFF-F image, attaching it to an email (using the
MIME
A mime artist, or simply mime (from Greek language, Greek , , "imitator, actor"), is a person who uses ''mime'' (also called ''pantomime'' outside of Britain), the acting out of a story through body motions without the use of speech, as a the ...
format), and sending the document (using
SMTP
The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typi ...
). The destination fax receives the email and prints the attached document.
To interface with regular fax machines:
* T.37 can be used in conjunction with
fax gateways to communicate with regular fax machines. The fax gateway converts emails to regular faxes or regular faxes to emails.
* A T.37-compliant fax machine includes legacy fax functionality to send to regular fax numbers and requires a phone line for this.
* To find the destination faxes email address, the RFC 4143 standard is in development, which allows a fax machine to use a destination fax number to look up an alternative email address.
See also
*
Unified messaging
*
T.38 (Fax over the Internet Protocol)
*
Internet fax
The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
External links
Official ITU-T T.37 pageCisco Fax over IP T.37 Store and Forward Fax
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Internet Standards
VoIP protocols
ITU-T recommendations
ITU-T T Series Recommendations
Internet fax