Patent ID: 8588381

Claim:
A method of delivering fax messages, the method comprising: receiving, at an initial submission gateway device of an Internet fax system, a request to deliver a fax message to one or more third parties; storing, by the initial submission gateway device, one or more source files associated with the request and representing at least a portion of content to be included as part of the fax message to a shared storage area of the Internet fax system accessible by a plurality of imaging systems and a plurality of fax processing resources of the Internet fax system; for each imaging system of the plurality of imaging systems: calculating, by the imaging system, a load score based on one or more of a processor load associated with the imaging system and an amount of memory associated with the imaging system that is currently being used; and causing, by the imaging system, the load score to be made available to the initial submission gateway device; selecting, by the initial submission gateway device, an imaging system of the plurality of imaging systems to convert the one or more source files into a digital representation suitable for faxing by selecting a least loaded of the plurality of imaging systems, based on their respective load scores; storing, by the initial submission gateway device, a work request on a centralized work queue within a database of the Internet fax system accessible by the plurality of imaging systems, the work request containing information identifying the selected imaging system; polling, by the selected imaging system, the centralized work queue to identify whether any pending work requests exist for the selected imaging system; and responsive to identifying the work request, converting, by the selected imaging system, the one or more source files into the digital representation, associating the digital representation with an outbound fax job and causing the fax message to be delivered to the one or more third parties by submitting the outbound fax job to a fax modem of the plurality of fax processing resources.