What does it mean to ‘Fax Online’?

If you are reading this article then you, like many people, are confused about the term internet fax (- or email to fax; fax to email; online fax; cloud fax. All of which are interchangeable terms). Most people think of the word fax and imagine a fax machine attached to a phone line that sends and receives analogue information, but this is the definition of the traditional fax. Today, the fax has evolved, and many businesses and individuals now send fax online, using a fax server – the fax server being located on their network, or being owned by a third party fax provider. Below, we are going to take a closer look at the internet fax, and by the time, you get to the end of the article you will have a much better understanding of what it is.

To understand the process of sending a fax online, we have to go back in time and explain the original fax:

In the past, we used fax machines, which were like large printers that had the capacity to change visual information (i.e. the information on a bit of paper that was fed to the machine) into analogue data. This analogue data was then send down the telephone line, where it was picked up by another fax machine, which then converted the information back into a visual form, which the fax machine then printed out. Just a side note quickly, we’re using the past tense here, but many businesses and individuals continue to use fax machines, so they are not completely dead and this is why online service allow you to send email to fax machine, or fax machine to email. The traditional fax is still around, it is just less popular.

Today, the email to fax and the pure online fax work different from the above. Now, we use a fax server that is linked to our computer and our computer network if we have one. Instead of converting the information in analogue form, the server converts it into digital form, so that we can send it via the broadband line. The server also has the capacity to convert the digital information to fax. This means that it deals in both analogue and digital, and hence the reason that it can be opened with email, as well as received/sent by fax machine.

Because it is easier than buying a separate piece of software, most people and businesses, use their emails to send and receive fax. All they do is type a special address in the recipients address section of the email. The email is sent to that special address, which is actually the fax server, which then does what it needs to do by converting the information into the appropriate form, and then sending this to the recipient. There is an extra step involved than when sending email, but as the sender, you do not undertake this extra step yourself, your service provider or your server does it for you.

We hope that you have learned a little bit more about internet faxing. If you would like to learn more about sending faxes online, including information about fax server, then please visit our website.