GammaLink commissioned the report from Network Subscription Services (NSS) of Bedford, England, asking the company to conduct a series of tests on different fax hardware/software combinations, using a standard test suite in a simulated enterprise faxing environment.

The main conclusions of the report were that:

• Class 2 modems should be kept for personal/desktop use
• CBF cards should be used for enterprise faxing applications from both a reliability and cost-saving point of view. When using CBF cards in testing, identical faxes were transmitted in half the time taken by Class 2 modems, even though all the devices transmitted at 14,400 bits-per-second (bps)
• The use of serial ports for faxing places an unacceptably high load on the PC's processor when more than one fax line is used simultaneously. The report noted that CBF cards reduce this load considerably
• T.6 data compression capabilities used by CBF boards provide the prospect of reducing fax costs even further -- in its tests, the NSS noted an overall improvement of 10 per cent using T.6 compression, with improvements of up to 40 per cent being noted with certain types of data.

According to GammaLink, the survey will add fuel to the debate about the appropriateness of using Class 2 modems for heavy duty enterprise faxing. The company notes that, many network managers are already aware of compatibility issues arising from the proliferation of different fax modem standards and the problem of high CPU (central processor unit) usage during periods of heavy duty faxing.

According to GammaLink, the research raises a number of new issues, in particular, the robustness of Class 2 modems when put under load, and the speed of transmission.

Bob Walder, managing director of NSS, said that the analysis cast doubt on the ability of some Class 2 modems to handle the sort of heavy traffic usually associated with enterprise faxing. "Regardless of whether they were attached to standard or intelligent serial ports, the Class 2 modems took over twice as long to transmit faxes as the fax card, despite the fact that they were all transmitting at 14,400 bps," he said.

According to Walder, it was also noticeable that CPU utilization on the host could be up to four times greater when using external devices. "This could have a significant impact on the performance of the rest of the network," he explained.

Copies of the NSS fax testing project, along with copies of the publication "Class modems and GammaFax -- two approaches to computer based fax" are available free of charge by calling GammaLink's fax-ondemand server on +32-2-712-4322 and requesting document number 7000.

(Steve Gold/19960624/Press Contact: Gray Associates, tel +44-181-7449168, fax +44-181-744-9169; Reader Contact: GammaLink, tel +32-2-7124311, fax +32-2-712-4300)