My mom is getting rid of the internet. Now I have a spare computer laying around. What I want to do is hook that computer up to the phone line and get lets say a aol some odd number of minutes free set it up then hook it too my network. Can I make it soo I can access the internet from any computer?

Yes, that's what a router does. Look at the posts we all just made on routers in theis forum, I#ve even suggested a great system to do so ;).

Posted by Beryl Yes, that's what a router does. Look at the posts we all just made on routers in theis forum, I#ve even suggested a great system to do so ;).

He says he wants to get a dialup acct and run it throuout his house as a network on 56k. I didnt think that dialup could be put through a router.

Even if you pull it off, it's going to be a pain in the ass trying to surf the internet. And going to run up quite a phone bill since it will always be connected.

Posted by Jesus Jones I didnt think that dialup could be put through a router.

possibly a home made one

Posted by Jesus Jones He says he wants to get a dialup acct and run it throuout his house as a network on 56k. I didnt think that dialup could be put through a router.

Why wouldn't it work?

Basically, a router routes packets (hence the name). A packet directed towards my computer is sent to my router which, in turn, sends it to my computer. Dial-up is no different than DSL or Cable in terms of the basic principle (method of connecting people to the internet).

As SC said, it'd run up a whore of a phone-bill (cause it's always on). Your best bet is to get DSL (runs moderately cheap these days, something like $35/mo).

Posted by stealthy Why wouldn't it work? Basically, a router routes packets (hence the name). A packet directed towards my computer is sent to my router which, in turn, sends it to my computer. Dial-up is no different than DSL or Cable in terms of the basic principle (method of connecting people to the internet). As SC said, it'd run up a whore of a phone-bill (cause it's always on). Your best bet is to get DSL (runs moderately cheap these days, something like $35/mo).

Ah Ok, clarification appreciated.

Nah its ainte no, where keeping RR.

Posted by Crazydeep74 Nah its ainte no, where keeping RR.

Yeah....

....Care to clarify?

I don't know about phone plans elsewhere in the US, but at my house we pay a flat fee for unlimited local calling = no big phone bill for long connection.

Of course you can route it. The easiest way might be to have whatever computer it's connected bridge the dial-up and ethernet connections, and then share the dial-up on the ethernet, and just use a hub, or a router with DHCP disabled. I know you can do this in WinXP, OSX, and linux, some easier then others... it will be slow though, and a pain in the ass if you are using free AOL minutes cd's - last time I heard of somebody using them (years ago), they only lasted a month, and if you kept using them, they'd start billing you with little warning, and you could only do the offer once from the same credit card.

The best thing would be to pay 10-20$ a month for an unlimited 56k DialUp service, a provider in your area code should be easy to find.

Then you can use a normal router with a modem, be it a normal old computer or, literally, a combined modem/router for the phone line. It goes without saying that a router without a phone line modem is useless for you.

www.ipcop.org has good modem support

Listed above are cards that are known to work with IPCop. However, any 'hardware' based modem should work (which includes most ISA card modems). 'Winmodems' or 'software' modems will not work. USB based modems or serial modems should work.

Most other Linuxes should be the same.

The only other one I'd really recommend is http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/ (DialUp HOWTO - http://www.zelow.n...wto-ppp-dialup.txt)

personally i would feel it useless to share a 56k connection, and if your going to pay 20$/month for unlimited time why not pay the extra 15$ for high speed,thats what i pay with unlimited bandwith.

I have an SMC Barricade Router with a serial port on board, you can configure it for dialup with any external modem- had to use it for a few months when I moved out to the boonies before we got a better connection.

Got a 19.95 earthlink account - it was kind of a pain because it would hang up after a while being idle - so you'd fire off your web browser and you have to wait 45-60 seconds while it dials and connects then it moved right along.

It was useless for more than one person at a time to try and surf though.

I experimented with this theory the other week with a switch. Just plug both computers in to the switch and under the network settings I think you check the box that says "Share this connection" and voila! It worked for me. The only problem i had was my downloading program WinMX was slow, but the internet worked great. We have Earthlink Dial-Up, its pretty good when its not busy. It runs around 20 bucks a month and its alright, we get 1-800 access for free, and of course, POP3 and IMAP access too. I used to have AOL and MSN but they didn't really work out to well. You just have to watch out, the earthlink toolbar downloads spyware on to your computer.

Posted by SnArF ...

Windows as a router.

Thanks, now I'm going to have a nightmare.


* Although I'm all for VMware routers. Imagine having Embedded Win9x on a 450MHz; slap VMware on it and you can configure 4 real-time layers of firewalls/IDS/IPS in only 160MB ram on a single machine - Sweet.