Join Director of Product Management Todd OBoyle on April 26th as he covers the key elements of a phishing protection program. Whether you’re an old hat at phishing education or considering starting a program -- we'll discuss critical components that should be in any program.
The external serial modems are expensive because they are hardware based devices. Same is true for the internal versions of the same modems, usually a bit less expesive as it is more or less the same product without an enclosure.
A hardware modem does not require the computer CPU to do work. This is a big deal for faxing since faxing protocols have sensitive timing. A software type modem is subject to every other application running on a PC to respond. So if the machine is doing something else there is a chance of the fax operation to fail due to variation in response times while transmitting/receiving a fax.
This may not sound like such a huge issue but you will find that you need a very stable faxing setup because you not only have to deal with timing for your system but every other faxing system you connect to. Unfortunatly you cannot control other people's fax setups so the best way to go about it is to make sure yours it solid. Supporting all the protocols is just one part of it, a stable hardware platform is the other.
For really solid perfomance I would suggset going toward an actual PCI fax board. This is basically a fax machine built onto a board - not a modem pretending to be a fax. More expensive again but very reliable.
http://www.techarts.com/products/trufax/