Lets say at home you have DSL or cable and a regular telco line (or a line combined with DSL). At work you could use a dialup internet connection.
How hard would it be to set up a system where you can dial your home phone number from work and connect to the interent via your home broadband? What equipment is needed, could a password be set up to prevent others from accessing it? Do you need to leave a computer turned ON at home for this to work?
A diagram of what I would like to do:
[work computer] — [work modem] ------[work phone line]---------(telco)--------[home phone line]-------[home modem]-------[?]--------[home broadband modem]-------[internet]
(yes I know the bandwidth will be limited by the slowest part)
That should work ok. Yes, you’ll likely have to leave a computer (the one with the modem) on - either that or make sure your PC and modem both support Wake-On-Ring, and set it up.
As for what software and local network configuration you’d need, I’m not sure. I know I could make my Linux box (currently doing router work) do what you describe with a little work, but since everywhere I go there’s broadband to access my home LAN directly over the internet, there’s no reason to do this.
Does your work really not have internet access? Where I live, giving up the cost of a dedicated phone line alone was enough to pay for monthly broadband. Unless it would be only for very brief periods of time, in which case a ‘real’ ISP may still be worth it for support, reliability, etc. (Oh, you’ll have problems with this co-existing with your answering machine, if you have one).
I’d do something like this myself, but I’d recommend you mess about with this only if you think networking is fun. In the extraordinarily likely situation that you run a Microsoft derived OS at home, check out this link for some ideas.
Sure, I had a friend who did it for another friend who was in an area where he couldn’t get broadband. However, you do need a spare telephone line which your not using. Given the cost of line rental, it might be cheaper just going for ordinary broadband. But it’s great if you have an extra line your not using.
If your running Win NT, XP (Pro, at least, I’m not sure about the Home edition), or 2000 at home, you can “RAS” in.
RAS is Microsoft’s Remote Access Service, and it allows you to dial into a modem connected to a PC and become connected as if you were on the local network.
Once you are connected, you can access anything available on the network, including the DSL service. As you say, your connection speed will be limited by the phone connection, but that might beat having no internet access at all.
RAS is pretty easy to set up on server end (that’s your home PC) and on the client side (your work computer) it’s just a Dial Up Networking connection.
I’ve done this many times to access customer’s internal networks, and I frequently use their internet connection when I’m connected. It’s simpler than disconnecting, getting on-line, then connecting again.
As the previous poster said, RAS works slick for this.
What I don’t understand is why you’d want to do this at all.
From your work machine you have 2 choices: dial a public ISP’s modem, or dial your own modem. Either way from that point on you’re connected to the wider internet via a pipe much fatter than your modem, so you’ll have essentially the same performance.
If you don’t presently have dialup service from an ISP, you can get it for $10/mo from a bewildering array of suppliers. That’s cheaper than paying for an extra phone line at your house.
And if you use a public ISP, they have redundant modem banks so you’re still in business if anything breaks. Your home-brew setup is entirely single string where any malfunction kills your connectivity.
Your home setup will be limited to 28.8 kbps, maybe 33.6 kbps up and down. 56 kbps speeds are unattainable without specialized equipment directly connected to the digital telephone network, which is what an ISP’s 56 kbps setup is.
Well leaving the fun part out of the equasion. The home phone line will not be used at all during work hours. Internet connection is not totally needed for work, more of a luxury.