> While online a few minutes ago, and while using Arachne Insight > to compose an email message, I suddenly heard a click and then > a dialtone on my modem. Then the modem started to dial, apparently > all by itself. I know I wasn't doing anything to cause the modem > to hangup and then go off-hook and then dial again. I reacted to > this very disconcerting experience by turning off the main power > switch on my computer.
A wild guess: Both modems and dialers tend to have a retry timeout. If the phantom redial occurred soon after the original dial in, perhaps your modem or dialer was misinformed about your connection, and dialed again after the timeout expired? In principle some software might act this way if the DTR suddenly went down, i.e., if your ISP drops your connection. The default behaviour for modems is usually to hand up.
