Patent ID: 8619300

Claim:
A fax relay apparatus comprising: a fax relay session controller comprising: a first converter to convert non-V.34 fax relay streams which are based on non-V.34 modulation and which are incoming from an Internet Protocol (IP) network into V.34 fax relay streams and to forward the converted V.34 fax relay streams to a V.34 fax relay gateway; and a second converter to convert output V.34 fax relay streams of said V.34 fax relay gateway into non-V.34 fax relay streams which are based on non-V.34 modulation and to forward the converted non-V.34 fax relay streams which are based on non-V.34 modulation to a remote device over the IP network; wherein the first converter comprises: a first transcoder to transcode non-V.34 fax relay packets into V.34 fax relay packets; a first deletion unit to block non-V.34 fax relay packets which cannot be transcoded into V.34 fax relay packets; a first packet generator to generate V.34 fax relay packets which are required by V.34 fax relay procedures and are disallowed by non-V.34 fax relay procedures; and a first time alignment unit to align in time the V.34 fax relay streams before forwarding the V.34 fax relay streams to the V.34 fax relay gateway; wherein the first transcoder, the first deletion unit, the first packet generator, and the first time alignment unit are operative to convert the incoming non-V.34 fax relay streams into V.34 fax relay streams.