Partial fax delivery and multicast by the store and forward fax devices with limited memory

Abstract

An email/fax communication system is disclosed for use in a packet switching network environment including a mail server for storing email messages for transmission thereof, in the form of a fax document, to one or more recipient fax machines. In one embodiment of the present invention, the email/fax communication system is disclosed to include a router for receiving a first email message, in the form of packets, from the mail server, for converting the first email message packets to first fax pages of a fax document and for transmitting the first fax pages to the one or more recipient fax machines. Upon failure to successfully transmit at least one of the first fax pages of the fax document to the one or more recipient fax machines, the router for converting the failed fax pages to secondary email packets for re-transmission thereof to the one or more recipient fax machines, wherein the router behaves as a conventional fax machine by re-transmitting only failed fax pages thereby avoiding re-transmission of the entire fax document.