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 sound was not the same. I worked in dial up tech support and you could tell a lot by listening to the modem.

You had the option to turn it off, but it was left on by default to let you hear what was going on. You could tell the modem speed and protocol by what the sounds were doing before they stop.