Can tip try more than one line for each site?
This is often a problem where a university has several modem lines and several thousand students trying to use them… Make an entry for your university in /etc/remote and use <\@> for the pn capability: big-university:\ :pn=\@:tc=dialout dialout:\ :dv=/dev/cuaa3:br#9600:at=courier:du:pa=none: Then, list the phone numbers for the university in /etc/phones: big-university 5551111 big-university 5551112 big-university 5551113 big-university 5551114 tip will try each one in the listed order, then give up. If you want to keep retrying, run tip in a while loop.