Facsimile and static presentation processing – Facsimile – Electronic mailbox
Reexamination Certificate
1999-03-26
2003-11-18
Coles, Edward (Department: 2622)
Facsimile and static presentation processing
Facsimile
Electronic mailbox
C358S403000, C358S407000, C358S001150, C379S100010, C379S100060
Reexamination Certificate
active
06650440
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates generally to the field of data transmission systems, and in particular, to a system, apparatus and method for reducing facsimile (fax) transmission status outcalls by a receiving Fax-to-SMTP gateway to a remote fax device upon the gateway receiving responses to at least two confirmation request messages.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The transmission of facsimiles is a very popular mechanism for the transfer of information. It has been a standard of transferring information for many years. Fax transmissions are often used for sending textual documents, drawings, illustrations, music sheets, and other information fixed on a piece of paper or stored in memory as an electronic file. More recently, electronic mail (e-mail) has become another popular mechanism for the transfer of information. Because the use of e-mail has become widely prevalent recently, more information has been transferred between network equipment through the use of e-mail. For example, word processing application files are now readily transferred between email users, as are Internet web files in the form of Hyper Text Markup Language ‘HTML’.
Recently, there has been a need to merge facsimile and e-mail transmissions. For instance, fax information can now be transmitted as an attachment to an e-mail message to other equipment that accepts reception of faxes. A personal computer (PC) can be set up to send an email message having attached thereto a facsimile file, which may be transmitted through the Internet to another PC having fax and modem capability or, alternatively, to another fax machine. One standard protocol employed in the industry for the transmission of a facsimile file with e-mail is to format the facsimile file in accordance with the Tagged Image File Format (TIFF).
FIG. 1
illustrates a block diagram of an example prior art fax-over-email communication system
10
for the generation and transmission of email with an attached TIFF file. The system comprises a sending fax machine
12
and a standard FAX-to-SMTP gateway
14
(SMTP stands for “Simple Mail Transfer Protocol”) at a sending end of the system
10
. The fax-over-email communication system
10
also includes a plurality of mail servers (also known as SMTP servers or Mail Transfer Agents (mailers)), six of which are shown in
FIG. 1
by example as mailers having respective even reference numbers
16
-
26
associated therewith. The system
10
further includes a FAX-to-SMTP gateway
28
and a fax machine
30
at a receiving end thereof. The sending and receiving fax machines
12
and
30
are coupled to respective FAX-to-SMTP gateways
14
and
28
by public switch telephone network (PSTN) interfaces
32
and
34
. The FAX-to-SMTP gateways
14
and
28
are coupled respectively to mailer
16
and mailer
26
by respective communication links
36
and
38
. The communication links
36
and
38
cause coupling between the gateways and the mailers pursuant to any protocol that enable ingress and egress mailers to communicate to SMTP gateways. An example of such a protocol is the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). Also, the mailers
16
-
26
are coupled to each other by respective communication links
40
a-e,
which may also use any protocol capable of effectuating such communications such as the TCP/IP protocol. It should be noted that the protocol employed for establishing communications between the mails need not necessarily be the same protocol employed in establishing communications between the gateways and mailers.
The fax-over-email communication system
10
is shown merely to illustrate how, in the prior art, a standard fax message in compliance with the T.30 protocol is sent from the sending fax machine
12
to the receiving fax machine
30
, whereby the fax message is communicated through the system by way of an email message having an attached TIFF file. First, a standard fax transmission (fax message)
42
is generated by the sending fax machine
12
and delivered to the standard FAX-to-SMTP gateway
14
by way of communication interface
32
. The FAX-to-SMTP gateway
14
converts the standard fax message into a TIFF file and thereafter attaches the TIFF file to an e-mail message
44
. The e-mail message
44
is then transferred through the communication link
36
using the TCP/IP protocol. The email message
44
is then relayed from mailer
16
to mailer
26
by way of the other intermediate mailers
18
-
24
and communication links
40
a-e,
also using the TCP/IP protocol. Thereafter, the receiving FAX-to-SMTP gateway
28
receives the email message
44
from mailer
26
through communication link
38
. The FAX-to-SMTP gateway
28
then detaches the TIFF file from the email message
44
and converts the TIFF file into the fax message
42
. The fax message
42
is subsequently delivered to the receiving fax machine
30
.
After the receiving fax machine
30
receives the fax message
42
, it is typically desired that the receiving FAX-to-SMTP gateway
28
send back a confirmation message to inform the user at the sending fax machine
12
that the fax message
42
was successfully delivered to the receiving fax machine
30
. In the prior art, the sending FAX-to-SMTP gateway
14
is configured to send a confirmation request message along with the email message
44
to the receiving FAX-to-SMTP gateway
28
by way of the mailers
16
-
26
. There are two standard confirmation request messages that are typically generated and sent in order to obtain a status as to the delivery of the fax message
42
. One is a delivery status notification (DSN) message specified in protocol RFC1891 issued by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and the other is a message disposition notification (MDN) specified in protocol RFC2298 also issued by the IETF.
The sending FAX-to-SMTP gateway
14
may be configured to send either a DSN confirmation request message, or an MDN confirmation request message, or both. It is desirable to send both the DSN and the MDN messages in order to better ensure the accuracy of the confirmation. In other words, sending both the DSN and the MDN confirmation request messages increases the likelihood that a confirmation response to these messages will be returned back to the sending FAX-to-SMTP gateway
14
. The DSN confirmation request is transmitted with the email message
44
as an part of the email message's extension. Each of the mailers
16
-
26
must have DSN capability so as to propagate the DSN confirmation request to the next mailer. If not, the DSN confirmation request will not propagate to the receiving FAX-to-SMTP gateway
28
while the email message
44
does so propagate.
In one prior art system, only MDNs (and not DSNs) are sent. This poses a problem however, in that the recipient may be configured to ignore the MDN request or it could be unable to understand the MDN request. In fact, users of such prior art systems are finding that some recipients cannot or will not respond to their MDN requests.
The MDN confirmation request is part of the email message's header information, as specified by the RFC822 protocol, and appears to the mailers as a block of data. Additionally, the MDN confirmation request does not require special support or capabilities for intermediate mailers, thus, the recipient, i.e. the FAX-to-SMTP gateway
28
, receives the MDN confirmation request as part of the mail message itself. The MDN request is more likely than a DSN to arrive at the recipient because MDNs do not require support of intermediate mailers, whereas, DSNs do require support of intermediate mailers.
A recipient need not be a gateway; another example of a recipient is a Personal Computer (PC) as shown in dashed-lines. It is important to note that in using a PC, the mail software program, which may be one of a variety of commercially-available software programs such as Novell Groupwise, Microsoft Outlook, Netscape mailer, that generally resides in PCs in PCs for reading email applications need not be modified in accordance with the present inventio
Cisco Technology Inc.
Coles Edward
Law Offices of Imam
Pokrzywa Joseph R.
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