Another way to think about what Ken is saying.... If you had internet access via DSL/CableModem that you wanted to share, you would have an RJ45 cable plugged into the WAN port of a broadband router and the computers pluged in to the lan side of the router. The router has its own mac address on the WAN side so the ISP can't tell weather its a PC, or a router. It looks the same to the ISP. Then the router itself has its own built in DHCP and assigns addresses and DNS values (that it gets from the ISP DHCP server for DNS). The computers don't have any idea where anything comes from and doesn't care. When you make a request for a connection to a computer outside of you own network, like a web page, ftp session, etc. your computer has the address of the router as the gateway, so it sees that in order to get to an address that is outside of its known network (internet) go through the gateway(router). Which in turn remembers what computer made the request, and the router will make the connection to the internet computer with its valid IP address and convert the response to the IP address of the computer inside your network. (IP Masquerading) <-- can't spell! The only difference with this typical internet sharing via broadband router and the modem router you have is instead of pugging the RJ45 from the DSL/Cable modem into the router, you plug in a phone line and the router calls into the ISP. The computers don't know the difference. Not only does this make the router compatible with windows, mac, unix, linux, netware, etc. It makes it compatible with anything that knows TCP/IP networking and DHCP (like appliances, game consoles, etc). There even used to be hardware out there (WebRamp) that could have several modems dialed into the ISP at once and increase the bandwidth that way. Hope that helps. B-) On Wednesday 30 March 2005 01:25 pm, John B wrote:
On Wednesday 30 March 2005 12:39, Joe Morris (NTM) wrote:
John B wrote:
By the way, the modem/router is a Best Data model 56NET. It's an external ethernet modem with a built-in router.
I think you misunderstood. It is an external router with a built-in hub/switch AND modem. It is the router that will control the modem, NOT the computers. The only problem I can see is with the dial-up by demand. I don't know how many hours you have with your ISP, but I was amazed at how often dial on demand causes a connection, last time I used it.
The box even says it's compatible with UNIX and Linux and the other OS's.
and it is correct. As far as your w98 and SuSE box go, they are on a LAN with the router as their DHCP server and WAN gateway, and probably DNS server as well. -- Joe Morris
Thanks Joe for your help. I've got unlimited dial-up time with my ISP, so no problems there. As far as dial-on-demand, the instructions look to me to read that all I have to do is just use my regular dial-up process (I use kppp), and if the modem is already connected, the other computer(s) only need to just open a browser and go where they want or whatever, no need for them to dial or anything. Anyway, I'm gonna give Ken's instructions a shot and see what happens. I'm gonna wait until I have everything plugged in and set up and then install dhcp on my SuSE system, and just follow the instructions on the CD for the W98 system...hopefully it'll be a cake walk.
John B.