Call-Waiting Detection Ideas Please

[Paul Komski]

Here in rural Ireland the only access to the internet is by Telephone Dial-Up. It is too expensive (for many including myself) to have a second land-line and especially to upgrade to ISDN. Call waiting on the lines can be enabled.

My own current solution of not missing calls is to make the land-line divert to a cellphone but this also can get expensive and I have neighbors in the same predicament who don't get a good enough cellular signal when they are inside the house happily surfin'.

Can anyone suggest Hardware/Software options to allow detection of an incoming call, when one wants to be on-line and to not miss an incoming call. Any products with a known good pedigree? etc? All ideas and suggestions (that don't use a third-party to do this detection) would be most appreciated.



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Take nice care of yourselves - Paul

[pentachris]

How about a call waiting modem? I used this (http://www.actiontec.com/products/modems/cwi/cwi_overview.html) one for a while with satisfactory results.

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If my computer were the eighth dwarf, it would be Dumpy.
-Chris

[Paul Komski]

Thanks pentachris Looked promising http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif but I don't think they make modems suitable for European telecommunications. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif

A C/W-modem does seem the best option but I think (can anyone put me right on this??) that both the user's and the ISP's modems must support the V.92 protocol.

Or is it possible to have a C/W-modem without the ISP having V.92 as long as one just wants to be knocked off-line to be able to take the incoming?


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Take nice care of yourselves - Paul

[pentachris]

The modem I linked doesn't use v92 technology, just v90. It's ability to let you take a call during an internet session is independent of the connection protocol established - it just has to do with how long your ISP will wait with no modem response before it drops the connection. Actiontec says that, depending on your ISP, you've got up to four or five seconds after answering a call to hang up without losing your internet connection - never worked so good for me, but I didn't miss any calls (that I didn't want to). The v92 protocol, from what I understand, allows you to talk for much longer without losing your connection. But you are right in that taking advantage of the v92 features (or v90, or 56flex, or any protocol for that matter) requires support at both ends.

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...
If my computer were the eighth dwarf, it would be Dumpy.
-Chris