Topic: Add Multi-Tenant Support to Faxing Capabilities [Comments: 1]
kenlee

Wed, 07/28/2010 - 08:58 | Add Multi-Tenant Support to Faxing Capabilities

Currently the send fax, and the receive fax functions use system resources, with no per tenant limitations imposed. I have no way of limiting one tenant from using all of the fax system resources (ffa licenses) even though he has only paid for one concurrent fax. I envision a new field on the tenant management page which is: Maximum Concurrent Faxes. Then the send and receive fax scripts can conditionally reject incoming and outgoing faxes if the tenant is already using their Maximum Concurrent Faxes.

How are other people providing e-fax capabilities? I imagine pricing it per concurrent fax though a per minute premium could pay for the licenses and make this feature request a moot point. Is that what everyone else selling e-fax with TL is doing?

I also had to buy a tiff to pdf converter because the one that came with linux is old and wasn't fully compatible with newer versions of adobe acrobat:/

I also am having issues with running asterisk as user:group asterisk:asterisk, while webmin is creating files in /tmp owned by root:root. I will open a separate ticket for that though under general questions;)

eeman

Wed, 07/28/2010 - 16:55 | this is the wrong place to

this is the wrong place to request that. you will need to direct this complaint to digium. Asterisk is a flat resource design with multiple contexts for containers. Some modules support specifying context (like the most recent call parking) while others are entirely per installation (example sip channels, there is nothing in the engine that prevents one sip channel from calling another; or G729 licensing).

If you have a customer doing a lot of faxing then perhaps you should buy more licenses. This license structure is identical to G729. There is no per-tenant control of G729 usage. You could charge per-handset but its always possible to host 4-way calls on a single handset. Its also a similar concept to running a dial-up pool. Maintaining just the right amount of PRI to avoid busy signals while not having too many idle channels is part of the job. If you're trying to keep a 10:1 subscription ratio of fax licenses then you need to start with 10. You'll find that its only in the lower volumes that this ever becomes an issue. Eventually a 10:1 ratio would have so many idle channels it would never be an issue.

you'll also note that the send fax callfile has 12 retries every 300 seconds (5min). So even if all your licenses are in use, its not likely they will be for every single retry. If it is, then you definitely need a LOT more licenses and should consider a different subscription ration because your customer usage is disproportionate to casual use. Inbound calls work similarly, the calling fax station will re-try at a given interval as if the other fax machine was busy receiving a fax.

Erik Smith
CTO
BluegrassNet Voice
dCAP
Thirdlane Support by BluegrassNet Voice
eeman at bluegrassnetvoice dot com