VG202 and VG204 Voice Gateways for Connecting Analog Faxes

Recently, Cisco announced the VG202 and VG204 voice gateways. These gateways are fanless and have a small form factor that can fit just about anywhere. From a fax over IP perspective, these voice gateways are perfect for those situations where you just have a few analog fax machines that you need to connect to your IP infrastructure.

Cisco VG202 Analog Voice Gateway

Cisco VG204 Analog Voice Gateway


In the past, the only option from Cisco at a low price point was the Cisco ATA186 and ATA188 gateways. While these devices supported call control protocols such as H.323, SIP, MGCP, and SCCP, they only could send faxes using NSE-based passthrough. NSE-based passthrough used proprietary Cisco NSE (Named Signaling Event) messages to make the switchover to the G.711 codec. This would only interoperate with other Cisco voice gateways, such as IOS voice gateways configured with the "modem passthrough" command. The lack of fax relay support, including T.38 fax relay, was the main drawback of the ATA for many customers who used this product for connecting analog fax machines.

The VG202 and VG204 products are IOS voice gateways with support for all of the Cisco's fax and modem transport methods along with the call controls of H.323, SIP, MGCP, and SCCP. Most importantly, T.38 fax relay is supported as this is the preferred fax transport method today. Additionally, T.38 allows interoperability with third party voice gateways and fax servers, such as the Cisco fax server and the AXP-XMediusFAX server. For those scenarios where you need to connect just a few analog fax machines or modems to your IP infrastructure and you need all of the fax/modem features of a full-size IOS voice gateway at a low price point, the VG202 and VG204 are ideal.

• Cisco
• VoIP / Convergence
• fax
• fax relay
• FoIP
• Gateway
• passthrough
• T.38
• Voice Gateway