20 ms·
The sound of the dialup, pictured (2012)
- HenryBemis 9y agoYou see an interesing article. I see a new ringtone :)
- jlgaddis 9y agohttp://evilrouters.net/56k.mp3 http://evilrouters.net/56k.mp3
- twic 9y agoI'd love to see something similar for ADSL. There's no audible part to ADSL, but there are still two modems talking to each other, and from what i understand of it, there's a rich and interesting process involved in setting up the line - tone ordering and so on.
- digi_owl 9y agoDSL is by design placed outside the human auditory range (also why it has such limited range between home and exchange). As such, you are better off thinking about it like the analog part of most any wired network. ISDN by contrast puts a digital signal where the PSTN analog signal normally is (iirc).
- twic 9y agoADSL still pretty different to something like Ethernet - not that i understand Ethernet terribly well either. Ethernet is baseband: it really is a digital on-off signal, with Manchester encoding, 8/10 encoding, 64/66 encoding, etc. ADSL is broadband: there is modulation into phase and frequency patterns. Mind you, 8/10 encoding is amazing as well, and a good explanation of that would be well worth a read for this audience!
- smash33 9y agosmash33 upvote.
- smash33 9y agoDoubtful indeed
- cbar_tx 9y agothat's crazy. I was just looking at this the other day and used the sound clip to make an annoying ringtone for my phone
- outworlder 9y agoPretty sure that the sample handshake available in the article is not for a 56k negotiation. My ears are saying that it sounds more like a 14.4k negotiation.
- dzhiurgis 9y agoI was hoping something more like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdgvceSBroU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdgvceSBroU
- gexla 9y agoThe noisiest part of the process in our house was the constant dialing to get onto AOL followed by the busy signal. Most fun when I was trying to sleep in.
- LordKano 9y agoMmmmmmm. BBS glory days. Sometimes, I miss that era. I could tell the speed of the connection by the sound of the handshake.
- krylon 9y agoI get waves of nostalgia when I hear that screeching sound. At work, when the fax machine was still sitting in my office, I deliberately turned the sound on (for those who don't know: the initial handshake part sounds pretty much the same for modems and fax). Then we got a shiny new printer/scanner/fax that now sits in the hallway. When I had Internet access for the first time (1996), I used a 14.4 modem for about a year, before I could switch to ISDN. To me, sound always signified a window opening to a new, magical world, where the only boundaries were your imagination and available bandwidth. A friend of mine once dialed the wrong number, and a human picked up. Hearing a human voice from the modem was really strange. Ah, good times (except for the crappy bandwidth and the fact that the phone company charged by the minute).
- ChuckMcM 9y agoI used to have it as the ringtone for my boss at work, and chuckled when I heard it because it meant work was 'dialing in' to me to figure something out :-) It does confuse people when your phone makes that noise though and then you start talking to it.
- userbinator 9y agofor those who don't know: the initial handshake part sounds pretty much the same for modems and fax I believe Step 11, in particular, is the one very recognisable as "the fax sound": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO_7lEXaJyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO_7lEXaJyo
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoIt was when Going Online was still a ritual, just like starting up the computer was - it took a while, sometimes you had to go through a menu or start up Windows or whatever separately still, you got this jingle when starting up, sometimes a login screen, all that stuff. Then going online, dialing up, telling the family (if any) that you're using the internet for a while, firing up the browser, etc. Using the internet was (for most people anyway) a very focused task too, given the per minute charge - get online, do what you want, get offline again. I noticed that myself very quickly after getting DSL; while we had a bandwidth limit (1500 MB / month iirc), I still spent a lot of time online; freed from pay per minute, you get a lot more time to just browse and explore. Still do the latter. Usually it's browsing Reddit, but sometimes I fall into a rabbit hole.
- danparsonson 9y agoClassic article! I would also like to recommend http://www.windytan.com/2014/02/mystery-signal-from-helicopter.html http://www.windytan.com/2014/02/mystery-signal-from-helicopt... - Oona is clearly a talented engineer :-)
- skellertor 9y agoVery intersting glimpse into our past and DTMF.
- ceautery 9y agoI remember reading this when it came out, and it was fascinating, especially considering listening to modems to diagnose problems is how I made my bones in tech support back when CompuServe was still a thing. I'm an old timer, and have even used a 300 baud modem with an acoustic coupler that the article referred to. I listened to the evolution of modem handshakes, and had no idea what parts meant what, but over the years I correlated different problems to different sounds, and through osmosis learned the various AT commands for different chip manufacturers (the main three I ran across were Hayes/Rockwell, USR, and Motorola) to lock them in certain modes - set the flow control mode (RTS/CTS or X-on/X-off), set the max and min baud rates, and set various error control algorithm modes. Doing tech support for a couple years in the 90s, the biggest problem I saw (beyond the fact that average users were pretty unsophisticated back then), was the quality of telephone lines in certain areas of the country. If you live in the sticks, you're screwed and lucky to achieve 9600 baud with any consistency. If you live in larger cities with crumbling infrastructure, you're likely to have some "signal bleed" (not sure what to call it) where other conversations are faintly audible on your lines. In both of these cases, the negotiation sequence would restart several times, sometimes getting lucky and connecting, but more often failing until we found the right AT commands to lock a lower baud rate and force error correction - MNP? I think that was the magic bullet in most cases. In the end, the phone infrastructure improved greatly just about everywhere, but by then it didn't matter as much, as people started moving to cable modems, typically plugged directly into a desktop computer, running Win 95 and getting hijacked by 0 day exploits to build the first botnets. Good times. Anyway, I'm glad to see this article has held up over time and people still find it interesting.
- losteverything 9y agoWe used to whistle into the coupler...wish i took a picture that HS class... And also got to know the sounds.
- digi_owl 9y agoGot online only in the late 90s, but i do recall listening to the tones as i could kinda tell if i were to get a bad connection by when the handshake ended.
- 9y ago
- breakingcups 9y agoHeh, I remember the sound over here (The Netherlands) sounding just slightly different. Probably differences in negotiation? Amazing what nuances the brain can pickup when exposed to something often enough.
- Symbiote 9y agoThere are some other versions here [1], but nothing I could find easily on Youtube -- even a BBC article from earlier this year was using the same recording as this article. I also remember the sound being a bit different (in the UK, but probably close if not identical to the Netherlands). I'd like to test, and there's probably a dial-up modem in the junk box at work, but I don't have a phone line. [1] http://www.findsounds.com/ISAPI/search.dll?keywords=modem http://www.findsounds.com/ISAPI/search.dll?keywords=modem
- isoprophlex 9y agoWe went to 56k6 or 28k8 baud almost immediately. Other places of the world were stuck with much slower baudrates for longer. Maybe that made the difference? Or it's just the acoustics of older, crappier speakers
- scoot 9y agoClick "past" under the article title for previous discussions. Lots of fascinating content in that blog!
- krallja 9y ago(2012)
- sillysaurus3 9y agoBTW, every post from this blog is amazing. See the two recent ones: http://www.windytan.com/2017/09/descrambling-split-band-voice-inversion.html http://www.windytan.com/2017/09/descrambling-split-band-voic... "Voice inversion is a primitive method of rendering speech unintelligible to prevent eavesdropping of radio or telephone calls." http://www.windytan.com/2017/07/virtual-music-box.html http://www.windytan.com/2017/07/virtual-music-box.html "A little music project I was writing required a melody be played on a music box. However, the paper-programmable music box I had (pictured) could only play notes on the C major scale. I couldn't easily find a realistic-sounding synthesizer version. [...] Perhaps, if I digitized the sound myself, I could build a flexible virtual instrument to generate just the perfect sample for the piece!" My favorite is "Mystery signal from a helicopter" http://www.windytan.com/2014/02/mystery-signal-from-helicopter.html http://www.windytan.com/2014/02/mystery-signal-from-helicopt...
- JorgeGT 9y agoIf I remember correctly from the last time she also has a great post about decoding RF bus stop signals. Super useful for a home assistant!
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- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- samstave 9y agowow that is awesome
- jcims 9y agoShe has an interesting YouTube channel as well. Some of her signal visualizations are very cool.
- allannienhuis 9y agoI love that sort of sleuthing. It displays an incredible depth of knowledge of her subject area (signal processing), and great intuition.
- nautilus12 9y agoThis would be more elucidative if they had the sound and a moving bar superimposed over the image so I dont have to go back and forth.
- digi_owl 9y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abapFJN6glo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abapFJN6glo
- nautilus12 9y agoThanks!
- jszymborski 9y agoOona is definitely a personal hero of mine.
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- logfromblammo 9y agoManually decoding the DTMF in the spectrogram gives me 1-570-234-0003, which turns up a lot of search hits.
- lostboys67 9y agoI can remember at my first job (which was a long way away from the Exchange / central office). The carrier signal was a little weak and I had to whistle the correct tone down the line to get the other end to pickup :-) We also when we had a project that used modems for remote data collection our electronics shop modified (technically illegal) the modems with adjustable gain
- ugaro 9y agoOona is one impressive female.
- fb03 9y agoShe is friends with Otoko.
- enknamel 9y agoI always wanted to know this. But by the time I was old enough to understand it, dialup was out of my life.
- rogerweissman77 9y agoThat sound brings back so many memories. BACKNEXT
- rando444 9y agoPrevious conversation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171514
- bob23 9y agoI get waves of nostalgia when I hear that screeching sound. Most people do not remember this sound.
- jjawssd 9y agoI never understood why in the United States getting 56k was impossible. It was always slightly less than that. Meanwhile in Europe I easily obtained 56k negotiation.
- ptaipale 9y agoThere was a FCC regulation limiting the transmission power sent on the line; this regulation did not exist elsewhere. It limited the speed to 53.3 kbit/s.
- GrumpyNl 9y agoThose were the days you could hack a mainframe with a cassette player. Boy did we have fun with that.
- aequitas 9y agoI always wondered if it would be feasible to setup a modem connection wireless. In a way that you would have a loudspeaker and microphone at each end of a field and just transmit the noises through the air.
- u801e 9y agoThere's a constant noise for data after the connection has been negotiated. I'm not sure how loud it would have to be to work. I do remember hooking up two modems directly with a phone line, turning off dial tone detection on the answering modem and issuing an ATA on the answering modem and a ATDT on the calling modem and negotiating a connection that way. It still was only able to transmit at roughly 3 KB/sec.
- jadedtuna 9y agoReminds me of this DEF CON talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFTiD7EnVjU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFTiD7EnVjU
- martyvis 9y agoThat's basically what Google Nearby uses - one of it's options is to signal to near devices over ultrasonic audio. In fact it looks they are even using it for a payment system http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4896748/Google-Tez-payment-app-uses-ultrasonic-sound.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4896748/Googl... Not sure what the actual technical specification for the method is.
- icebraining 9y agoThat's how the early modems worked, although at a very short distance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler
- niftich 9y ago"Wireless" transmission of sounds through the air to achieve some programmatic purpose is relatively widespread, although not very well-known. The air is a noisy medium, so ultrasound is often used to move the sounds squarely out of the frequency range that humans can produce or hear, but usually keeping it within ranges that off-the-shelf microphones can record and speakers can produce. In recent years, one particularly significant contributor is Boris Smus [1] who released some example code in 2013 and went on to develop the Google Chromecast's ultrasonic pairing mode [2]. Ultrasonic networking has also been leveraged by tracking apps and SDKs [3], and has occasionally featured as a product pitch [4]. It also pops up every once in a while as a proof-of-concept, Show HN, or github code dump -- it's one of those "I can't believe this isn't done more often, so I'm gonna do it" ideas whose deployment is actually more widespread that most people suspect. [1] http://smus.com/ultrasonic-networking/ http://smus.com/ultrasonic-networking/ [2] https://gigaom.com/2014/06/26/chromecast-will-use-ultrasonic-sounds-to-pair-your-tv-with-your-friends-phones/ https://gigaom.com/2014/06/26/chromecast-will-use-ultrasonic... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13337949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13337949 [4] https://www.chirp.io/ https://www.chirp.io/
- qrbLPHiKpiux 9y agothis sound will make an awesome voicemail announcement.
- kuharich 9y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171514
- anst 9y agoStranger Things.
- combatentropy 9y ago> Why was it audible? Why not, one could ask. [...] > Even then, the idea of not hearing what's happening > on a phone line you're calling on was quite new, > and modems would default to exposing the user to the handshake audio. [...] > > All you had to do to silence the handshake was to send the command ATM0 > down the serial line before dialing. And I think the user was comforted by the ritual, as far as I can tell from conversations with my friends and scenes from pop culture like You've Got Mail. I am for using the computer's own low-level apparatus as progress bars, instead of the opaque logos or polished animated graphics, blocking the view like a royal guard. For example, I wish my laptop and my phone listed the shell's output during boot, like some Linux distros still do. Even though most users wouldn't fully understand it --- and I have to admit that even I don't understand a lot of it --- the quickly scrolling text is no worse than an animated spinner in conveying, "Loading..." I think most users, and I mean nontechnical, are okay with the exposure and even kind of like it. It makes them feel like they're in a spy movie. Some will never try to understand it and will just take it as a more-detailed progress spinner. Some will slowly become familiar with some of the lines, google them out of curiosity, and it may be the spark that lights them down the long trek to becoming a programmer. Isn't that one of our country's goals, to encourage kids to become programmers? Anyway, my point is, I came to programming from graphic design and front-end. I spend a lot of time thinking about user-interface design. But maybe I'm against the grain in wanting some of the architecture to be allowed to hang out. (Does that make me a Brutalist?)
- manodocedoceu 9y agoproviding a common user with access to views and doorways to discovery and deeper technical understanding is essential to user-centric design. that's how we move the ball foward in terms of baseline system-fluency, which necessarily deepens progress at the cutting edge. Furthermore the widened technical prowess means yAy! for creativity and less exploitable asymmetry for our almost-friendly techno-fascist cohorts. Widening and deepening user involvement-- through portals, gateways, peepholes, and trap-doors-- into a labyrinth of techno-primitive toolmaking utopia.. hah What might that look like? Who knows? I have been thinking about the variation of user-modes represented, perhaps, as masks, deepening and widening layers of involvement, according to need, habit, curiosity and play. The relation between the masks and the nature of the masks is still in geststion. Here in SP (sao paulo), in the 13-story abandoned building we've transformed into an an artist residency and resource center, we're exploring the theme 'Ancestral/Astral' for an event set to take place in the middle of December. Ancest-ASTRAL-ity : The ideal state of discovering the essence of what makes us human, our roots, through exploratory perspectives of our shared heritage and created future. What has interested me personally since hearing about postmarkertOS is humans and tools: the psychology of tool use, our relationship with TECHNOS. A major theme that has remained constant throughout our human story is our use of tools to influence our future. How do we improve or make new tools? Usually with tools we've already built. You have two fuzzily-distinct elements: tools and techniques. But how would these design logix (like the boot-phase peephole you mentioned) materialize? Ideally this would happen on a mobile device running linux (im most interested in developing world megacities). Maybe start with easily malleable UI layers, that use modern web semantics (react × APIs). Make a boot-phase people have some interaction layers thst stimulate the curious user to explore what is happening. There are a lot of ways to do it, and all of them are right. If interested, u can find me in the postmarketOS matrix/freenode channel. Sorry if this does not meet aesthetic requirements, im on mobile.
- muxator 9y ago3d spectrogram: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvr9AMWEU-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvr9AMWEU-c Animation of the picture illustrated in this article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abapFJN6glo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abapFJN6glo If you live with someone >= 30, turn up the volume and wait for him/her to appear at the door for a nostalgia moment...
- the_cat_kittles 9y agoshot in the dark- that looks like a good way to visualize a bunch of timeseries lines, do you know what they are using for that graph?
- jerrre 9y agoIn the description there is "ozone 5" Which refers to iZotope Ozone, that audio mastering software. Normally you would put in one or two timeseries (that is a mono or stereo audio file where the y axis is amplitude). In this case the audio is mono, and you're looking at a short time fourier transformation (STFT) with the parameters as in the description, where the height is de magnitude of the frequency bins, and the Y axis (from right to left in the video) is frequencies from low to high, in logarithmic scale as is standard in audio. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3G2eHEnt7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3G2eHEnt7c here it is used on some music
- DarronWyke 9y agoThis also takes me back to watching some modems have bad implementations of the USR protocols. Some were so bad that they'd actually watch the packet traffic for commands. I remember seeing people getting knocked offline from someone typing ATH0++ over IRC (all plaintext!), and their modem catching it as an actual USR command (the Attention-Hang Up command).