An adaptive protocol for real-time fax communications over Internet

Internet faxing allows users from different locations to exchange fax documents without incurring the high costs associated with international toll charges. This paper proposes a protocol, Adaptive Internet Fax Protocol (AIFP) which provides a basic framework for Internet fax transmission. It comprises three secondary protocols, which take care of issues like capability exchange, change of data socket, network load feedback and data transfer. AIFP is able to facilitate real-time fax transmission over unreliable Internet and make delivery confirmation possible. In a heavy jitter network, AIFP is able to provide at least session mode transmission albeit not real time.