Sending lots of faxes

Hello all. I am a fairly new person here and have spent a lot of time reading over the forums. I need to set up an Asterisk server that is capable of handling 46 simultaneous fax calls. It is not my intention to have actual fax machines hooked up to the PBX. My need is only virtual. My basic configuration will be the PBX server with 2 PRI lines coming into a Digium multiport card. Our desire is to have calls route both ways: into the server from the PSTN and then out of the server to the PSTN.

For inbound calls, I need the system to answer the inbound call as a fax machine and place either a TIF or PDF into a directory to be handled outside of Asterisk. It would be awesome if I can configure it such that I know what the dialed number is (DNIS). While there may be times that it will be beneficial to know the caller ID of the originating fax number, it is not necessary.

For outbound calls, I’d like to provide a PDF and fax number and get the call queued up to dial the far end, attempt to deliver the fax, and then post some status.

And that is all. I don’t need to worry about bridging extensions, conference calls, video calls, phones/features or local extensions. Truly there would not be any hardware on my end connected to the server other than the 2 PRI lines from my phone carrier.

So my biggest concern is how much server do I need to have in place in order to handle up to 46 calls at 1 time, either inbound or outbound or any combination? While we might not ever hit “full” capacity, I do need to plan for it. I am scheduled for an Asterisk class next month so I am hopeful that I’ll be able to learn quite a lot about the server then. But I want to get a jump on my hardware needs so that when I return from my class, I can hit the ground running.

Thanks in advance for any insight anyone can provide.
Mark

Two solutions comes to mind:

Official FAX software from DIGIUM (commercial/payable solution):
www1.digium.com/en/products/soft … r-asterisk

HylaFax (open source/free solution):
hylafax.org/content/Main_Page

Both softwares “only” handle Fax sending/receiving. You need to do some custom scripting or programming to get exactly the solution that you need.

As far as server hardware is concerned - I think that any current new server will handle the call load. It’s not that big …