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NETCFAX INFORMATION 
LINKS


   

Major features
Full features comparison list
Overview of 
computer faxing
What does 
NetCFax do
Versions info

Changes since 
the last releases
Features planned for next major release
Online help system
 
 The NetCFax networked fax system...   NETCFAX - Networked fax system

The NetCFax Online Information System


This page provides information to help you understand why
the NetCFax client window caption contains different "descriptions"




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The NetCFax client is a surprisingly versatile (and complex) piece of software that by design has to be able to provide full faxing functionality to your networked PC' in a variety of different Windows environments.

To allow it to do this, it can be configured to run under - 

1 - A normal, (single user) style PC running Windows 98, Windows ME  or Windows 2000 Pro.  

2 - On an XP Pro system that has Fast Task Switching (FTS) enabled, or even one that provides Remote Desktop Session (RDP) support.

3 - On a Windows 2000 or 2003 Server (Most usually running as a Domain controller of some form) supporting multiple RDP sessions.


For case 1 above, this is pretty straightforward, and you will usually install the client without checking the Domains or RDP support options.  In this case, the Fax client's caption bar will contain [LOCAL MACHINE SYSTEM].  

For cases 2 and 3 above, this can be less straightforward, as you will usually install the client and checking either/or the Domains and/or RDP support options.  In these cases, the Fax client's caption bar will usually contain [REMOTE DESKTOP SESSION].  


When the caption says [LOCAL MACHINE SYSTEM] you can normally start multiple instances of that single installed fax client on that same machine if you wish to do so.  This lets you have fax clients running on your desktop or syst5me tray at one and the same time that are perhaps connected and logged into different fax servers.

When the caption says [REMOTE DESKTOP SESSION] you cannot start multiple instances of that single installed fax client in the same RDP Session.  You can however have multiple RDP sessions provided by the Windows Server that are being run on different computers across your network, and all of these will be running the same single fax client installation (they are actually running it entirely on the Windows server machine). This lets the same fax client be used by multiple people at one and the same time, but each will be running it with their own personal configuration settings etc, almost as if it was installed on their own personal PC.

By default, the NetCFax client uses what is called a dynamically assigned TCP port to receive various notifications from the fax server they are logged into.  This is a very effective way to handle this on most networks, but it is essential that is does so if you are running the NetCFax client on an FTS system, or under RDP sessions, as all of these clients when running have the exact same IP address, which is the IP address of the PC the installation is on.  Therefore, if they are to received these notifications, the port must be different for each running instance, and then all is well.  Otherwise, these notifications will not be received by many of the client instances.

This can be further complicated by the quite understandable requirement on some networks that only a limited number of (tightly specified) TCP ports are used (or opened and made available) for all communications between the fax server and the fax clients.  The NetCFax client can even support this requirement as well, as it is quite easy to configure the client to use a fixed TCP port for all server notifications if you really need to do so.    However, in that scenario, you cannot run multiple instances on any of the machines for the reasons described above, so this is only a valid situation where the fax client is installed on each and every networked client PC, which is usually the case when that type of Port restriction is used. 

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page last updated October 23 2005