Guidelines for Optional Services for Internet Fax Gateways
RFC 4161
Document | Type | RFC - Informational (September 2005; No errata) | |
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Authors | T Satoh , Ken Watanabe , Keiichi Yokoyama , Katsuhiko Mimura , Chie Kanaide | ||
Last updated | 2018-12-20 | ||
Stream | IETF | ||
Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized bibtex | ||
Stream | WG state | (None) | |
Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 4161 (Informational) | |
Action Holders |
(None)
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Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | Scott Hollenbeck | ||
Send notices to | (None) |
Network Working Group K. Mimura Request for Comments: 4161 K. Yokoyama Category: Informational T. Satoh K. Watanabe C. Kanaide TOYO Communication Equipment August 2005 Guidelines for Optional Services for Internet Fax Gateways Status of This Memo This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005). Abstract To allow connectivity between the general switched telephone network facsimile service (GSTN fax) and the e-mail-based Internet Fax service (i-fax), an "Internet Fax Gateway" is required. This document provides guidelines for the optional functionality of Internet Fax Gateways. In this context, an "offramp gateway" provides facsimile data transmission from i-fax to GSTN fax; vice versa, an "onramp gateway" provides data transmission from GSTN fax to i-fax. The recommendations in this document apply to the integrated service including Internet Fax terminals, computers with i-fax software on the Internet, and GSTN fax terminals on the GSTN. This document supplements the recommendation for minimal features of an Internet Fax Gateway. In particular, it covers techniques for dropping duplicated fax messages, automatic fax re-transmission, error, return notice, and log handling, and possible authorization methods by DTMF (Dual Tone Multi-Frequency) for onramp gateways. Mimura, et al. Informational [Page 1] RFC 4161 Optional Services for Internet Fax Gateways August 2005 1. Introduction An Internet Fax Gateway can be classified as either an offramp gateway or an onramp gateway. This document provides guidelines for optional services and examples of Internet Fax Gateway operations. In particular, it covers techniques for dropping duplicated fax messages, automatic fax re-transmission, error, return notice, and log handling, and possible authorization methods by DTMF (Dual Tone Multi-Frequency) for onramp gateways. A more detailed definition of onramps and offramps is provided in [1]. Recommended behaviors for Internet Fax Gateway functions are defined in [15]. This document provides recommendations only for the specific cases hereunder: 1) the operational mode of the Internet Fax is "store and forward", as defined in Section 2.5 of [1]. 2) The format of image data is the data format defined by "simple mode" in [16]. This document does not apply to the gateway functions for "real-time Internet Fax", as described and defined in [18]. 1.1. Key Words The key words "MUST", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", and "MAY" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [17]. 2. Optional Services for an Offramp Gateway 2.1. Drop Duplicated GSTN Fax Transmission Electronic mail transport agents (MTA) deliver an Internet Fax message into either the recipient's mailbox or an offramp gateway mailbox. Hence, the message is retrieved for further action, which in the case of the offramp gateway, will result in its delivery to the GSTN fax service. The offramp gateway mailbox will thus receive all messages which the gateway will process, regardless of their final, distinct GSTN destinations. As such, addresses like Fax=+12224567654@example.com Fax=+38155234578@example.com Fax=+3904567437777@example.com Mimura, et al. Informational [Page 2] RFC 4161 Optional Services for Internet Fax Gateways August 2005 will all end up in the offramp gateway mailbox corresponding to the "example.com" domain. However, the handling of e-mail messages (including those of Internet Faxes) that contain more than one recipient, but are directed to the same final MTA, can be different, depending on the MTA configuration or features. A single message with multiple recipients in the SMTP envelope [19] is likely to be the most common case on the mail transport system, but it may happen that multiple copies of the same message are transmitted, one per recipient. Or it may happen that the final MTA is set to deliver a separate copy of the message per recipient into the final mailbox, supposing it is delivering messages to real mailboxes of distinct endusers. Thus, it may happen that the offramp gateway receives multiple copies of the same Internet Fax message that is to be delivered to different GSTN destinations, which are listed together and repeatedly in theShow full document text