TELEPHONY FUNDAMENTALS

Telephone-Line Basics For Modems

Modem connections to the telephone service are made using two wires (ring and tip) that are used in a standard telephone jack. The wires are named for the plug wires used in the original telephone lines by which telephone operators would manually connect two telephones at the phone company switchboard. There are two versions of the telephone jack:

• Half-duplex: The RJ-11 has only two wires, which make up one line. Therefore, only one signal can be sent or received at a time.
• Full-duplex: The RJ-12 uses four wires to make up two lines; it can be used to simultaneously send and receive.

Multifunction Modems

Most modems offer some form of fax capability, along with software that adds functions beyond the average, small, stand-alone fax machine. Such a modem is usually labeled a fax/modem. They can store faxes, both incoming and outgoing, for reference or online reading. Most allow direct faxing of a document from a word processor, generally by using the print command to send the pages to the modem, where they are converted on the fly to the bitmap form used to send and receive fax transmissions. Many programs let you to automatically attach a predesigned cover sheet with each fax.

Another addition to the basic data out/data in modem is voice mail. Here, the PC and telephone work just like an answering machine. If the phone rings and the modem does not detect either a data or fax tone, it switches modes and streams a recorded message (the outgoing message). The caller can be prompted to record a message for the owner, and in some cases the modem will even forward a pager call or fax with the message contents.

JOSE LEONARDO MONCADA TORRES

C.I 18878408

CRF

http://www.brainbell.com/tutors/A+/Hardware/Modem_Basics.htm