Talk:Demon dialing

I object to the recent changes to war dialing and demon dialing. I can find numerous sites that define "war dialing" as dialing a range of numbers, and "demon dialing" as dialing the same number repeatedly (though sometimes it's given as a synonym for the former).   Unless someone can justify the recent flip-flopping of their definitions, I'm going to change them back. --Arteitle 07:51, Mar 15, 2004 (UTC)
 * If Arteitle's post were on Facebook, I'd give it a triple thumbs up. These definitions are completely ass-backwards.  76.10.64.30 (talk) 20:52, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
 * For five years. For five flippin' years.
 * The trouble with Wikipedia is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it." - Patrick Young, paraphrased. 76.10.64.30 (talk) 20:56, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I remember that MS-DOS TELNET programs would continue to "listen" on a BBS phone line until whoever was currently connected hung up; would this fit into this article as a subtype of demon dialing? ExOttoyuhr (talk) 18:52, 21 August 2008 (UTC)


 * "Automatic redial, which is essentially exactly the same thing, but for modems, and included in most telecommunications programs that use modems, including all variants of Dial-up networking ever included in the Windows operating system." This sentence is absolutely awful. 64.25.200.58 (talk) 23:50, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Usage and Subsequent Enforced Redial Delays
I owned a Zoom Demon Dialer and several subsequent devices. While calling into radio shows was a widely noted use, the more utilitarian purpose was accessing customer service phone banks such as airline reservations and performance ticket vendors. The challenge of accessing busy customer service lines existed primarily during an era of telephony before PBXs generally supported incoming call queues, call control/Interactive voice response, call-back, etc., and corporate phone service was via massive bundles of POTS lines rather than T1/ISDN services. (The busy signal problem reemerged in 2020 when millions of people tried to access under-resourced government unemployment services by phone.) Within a few years of demon dialing becoming popular (both for phones and modems), consumer devices began to include a time delay between automated redials to mitigate their effects on the telecom infrastructure. I recall on handset it was at least 10 seconds, whereas in modems the auto-redial delay was generally 30 or 60 seconds (but could be overridden by manually reissuing a dial command.) I recall reading at the time there had been some regulatory intervention/requirement for delays. That reference would be useful for this article if someone can find it. Zatsugaku (talk) 18:09, 1 December 2021 (UTC)