home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: sparky!uunet!usc!news.bbn.com!news.bbn.com!wbe
- From: wbe@bbn.com (Winston Edmond)
- Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
- Subject: How does a called modem distinguish voice/data/FAX?
- Date: 20 Aug 92 03:57:24
- Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., Cambridge, MA
- Lines: 20
- Distribution: world
- Message-ID: <WBE.92Aug20035724@crystal.bbn.com>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: crystal.bbn.com
-
- Two questions:
- * I've seen the v5.00 notes Michael Schuster posted describing how a ZyXEL
- modem indicates what it thinks is on the other end of the phone line, but I
- don't understand how it can distinguish (1) silence because the calling
- data modem hasn't heard the answering tones long enough yet, from (2)
- silence because the person who called is listening to the "answering
- machine" message being transmitted in voice mode. What am I missing?
-
- * If the calling modem sent a brief identifying tone like FAX machines do,
- distinguishing voice from FAX and data calls would be easy. This makes me
- wonder if anyone's given any thought to a completely general mechanism --
- have the caller volunteer not just a brief set of tones, but also encode
- some kind of identifying number, with the number space an infinitely
- expandable set like SNMP. Leading octets could be used to separate out
- product classes, like FAXes, modems, security systems, videophones, etc.,
- and later octets could be used to identify manufacturers or capabilities.
- The absence of any identifying information or tones would indicate a
- regular voice call. Anyone heard of anything like that, or any suitable
- alternatives that do the same job, in the works? ISDN?
- -WBE
-