What actually were those noises that dial-up modems made when connecting? What caused the noise?
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I have knowledge on this. I can tell you everything.
They can send more than one tone through the line at once. Send a deep tone, and that means ‘0’. Send a high tone and that means ‘1’. That’s a very old & basic way of doing it. Slow tho.
Years later we invented more complicated ways to send data using lots of tones. It was better. And years later even better ways.
There’s now lots of different ways to do it. But when you dial another modem – your modem doesn’t know which language to use – so it asks. ‘Can you use that really good method, or just the crappy older way?’
The original modems needed a real handset to talk through. You put the handset into a rubber thing with a microphone and speaker. Your modem really did speak through the telephone handset. Later on they just built it all in the same box.
When broadband (DSL, or ADSL) appeared, that was just getting rid of the telephone network’s restrictions on sounds only humans can make. Broadband is the exact same thing as a modem except it speaks with VERY high pitched tones and many, many of them at once. A BRroooadd range of frequencies. A broad ..band.. you could say. It has more ..band.. ..width.. 🙂
This whole story also applies to radio and its why smartphones are faster than old phones at data.
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