Hello Richard!

Friday September 20 1996 22:45, Richard Malcolm-Smith wrote to All:

 > Can anyone tell me: What a guard tone is, and why I would want to enable
 > it?

International telephone systems love the fact that on a voice call, you're
not talking all the time; there's gaps in the conversation. When you're not
talking, they allocate your circuit to someone else, so in fact they carry
more conversations on the line (or satellite link) than they could if
everyone was talking continuously. I guess this is a form of TDM, time
domain multiplexing.

As I understand it, guard tones are an extra signal sent so that the equipment
that does the multiplexing won't think you're silent when you're not
transmitting data; without this, it might unplug you briefly, and you will
lose the line.


Regards,
Hamish

--- GoldED/P32 2.42.G1219+