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Interesting dial-up quirk

djberg96 on 2003-06-22T22:32:35

I only use dial-up when I need to log into the network at work from home. I learned a valuable lesson today reqarding dial-up.

You see, I have voicemail. And when you have new a voicemail message you can tell because instead of a solid dialtone you briefly get an interrupted dialtone (i.e. a beeping dialtone). However, this confused the dial-up modem on my laptop and kept returning with a "no dialtone" error message.

It also didn't help that I had muted the sound on the laptop, so it didn't occur to me originally that it might be the problem. I thought it was the phone cord or the port on the laptop itself that had gone bad.

What a shitty day.

Another thing to watch out for ...

rob_au on 2003-06-23T09:23:03

... is where you have call-waiting or call-alert enabled on the phone line. When the incoming call is received, the additional tones sent down the line can cause the modem to disconnect unexpectedly - This can be particularly annoying if someone keeps trying to call you every 5 minutes or so, expecting you to be off the phone soon, an interval just long enough to dial back into your provider and figure out where to resume your work.

Re:Another thing to watch out for ...

djberg96 on 2003-06-23T15:33:43

Yeah, I learned that lesson the hard way the first time I dialed in. I haven't actually tried it, but I'm pretty sure there's a way to temporarily disable it.

Re:Another thing to watch out for ...

Buck on 2003-06-24T04:30:52

*70 works on most voice networks for disabling call-waiting. YMMV. Also, your modem may have a setting for increasing the NO DIALTONE timeout or to not check for a dialtone. Otherwise, all you can do is check your voicemail to reset it.