Why did the dial up modem noise sound the same every time? What was the purpose of those sounds as the connection was being made?

Question

I understand that modems used the telephone line to transmit and decode sound into data, but I don’t understand why that noise everyone remembers needed to happen. You didn’t hear sound when you were loading a web page even though sound was being decoded by you modem… what was the purpose for it on start-up?

Edit: Autocorrect typo

In: Technology

Answer 1

The audible tones were there to establish the connection between the modems on both ends. After the “handshaking” between the modems, your pc modem muted its speaker.

The speaker was turned on during dialing so the person on the computer could hear if there was dial tone, if someone was already on the phone or there was a busy signal.

In the 80s, most homes only had one telephone line which was shared between the pc and all the other telephones in the house.