Internet facsimile as an Internet office appliance

The Internet's emergence as a worldwide digital infrastructure has dramatically encouraged a market for communications-oriented appliances, such as mobile phones, personal assistants, network-enabled games, interactive television, Internet telephony, and Internet facsimile. The marketplace is developing rapidly, along with specialized Internet-based "linking" services to connect these devices. Generally two different technical approaches are being explored for these services. One uses classic Internet technology, such as e-mail or the World Wide Web; the other incorporates unique standards, often derived from earlier non-Internet specifications. This article explores efforts to create Internet facsimile appliances, contrasting them with devices for Internet telephony. Efforts at Internet facsimile have produced two different sets of standards. Store-and-forward Internet facsimile is specialized as a profile of classic Internet mail. Real-time Internet facsimile uses a specialized protocol.