Asterisk offers the ability to both send and receive faxes, but it should be noted that all Asterisk is doing is the basics of fax transport. This means that providing a complete experience to your users will require external programs and resources beyond what Asterisk delivers.

Asterisk Fax can:

Asterisk Fax cannot:

Receiving is relatively simple, since the format of the document is determined at the sending end, and thus all Asterisk needs to do is store the document.

Transmitting is somewhat more complex, since the transmitting end is responsible for ensuring that the document to be sent is in the correct format for faxing. This typically places a burden on the user to understand how to create a properly formatted document, or requires complex client or server software to handle the formatting (for example, through a print driver installed on the local PC) and placement of the fax job in a location where the server can grab it and transmit it.