>You would still have to dial up every time you want on. It only takes a
>moment to dial up, but I find it changes my web browsing habits anyway.
>I wonder what the phone company would do if a local call lasted more
>than a few hours... (number of days..)
>
>I'll check out freesco, do you have to tell it when you want it to dial
>out?
I use an SMC7004AWBR, which is a wireless router/switch - unlike most of
the others, it also has a serial port to which you can connect an external
modem. It can be configured to dial-on-demand, so when you try and go off
your local subnet, it automatically dials in and gives you a connection -
it also supports a timeout for auto-hangup.
Unlike "high speed" connections, hearing the modem dial gives you a signal
that something is "going out to the internet" - I find it almost unbelieveable
how much software "phones home" when you start it. Folks with DSL etc. are
for the most part completely unaware that this is happening... It seems that
most of the software won't dial if you have a modem, but if it "thinks" you
have a full-time connection, it will connect without ever asking you...
[Now if I could only figure out why my WIN2000 machine insists on dialing
out every time I open "network neighborhood" to access the local network]
Winblows problems aside, the SMC router works well for me as a means of sharing
a dial-up connection - It was fairly easy to get configured and running, and
I don't have to keep a PC on all the time.
note: if you decide to go this route, make sure that the router supports it -
newer SMC's appear to have dropped this feature.
Regards,
Dave--
dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Vintage computing equipment collector.
http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html
Received on Tue Sep 14 2004 - 12:13:46 BST