havent seen a nerdy thread in awhile: Dialup ISP Howto?

[TurboGizzmo]

SOOOOOOOOOOO how would one go about building there own Dialup ISP? :)

Say i have a bunch of local sites that I dont want to pay for internet at each but want them to get email every night....my best thought is just have them dial in to a little box i put together that is tethered off my highspeed to send/receive and disconnect.....thoughts?

[Zach929rr]

Didn't read thoroughly, yet seems to be relevant:

http://forums.speedguide.net/showthread.php?t=241363

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/625321.html

Looks like most "reverse dial in" systems will run a good chunk of change... Rockwell Automation sells a unit IIR. I've dealt with a lot of Rockwell stuff in the pipeline industry over the past year.

[TurboGizzmo]

Ohhhh perhaps i can build a FREESCO box or use a Netopia Model R2020....hummm

[Ricky]

RRAS (Routing and Remote Access Services) is all you need, along with a bunch of modems and phone lines. If you use USB modems, you can connect way more for cheaper. But you likely won't achieve speeds above 33.6kbps.

[Devaclis]

Modem bank
RAS or dialup PPTP

If it is just for email and stuff, that is fine. Anything else and you are limited by your POTS lines and modem thresholds.

[rforsythe]

Server type? I used to set these up on linux/BSD, it's pretty simple. Also if it's not critical that they all dial in and receive at the same time, then stagger the connections (with some automatic retries in case one is getting deluged) and just use one modem. Unless you have a shit ton of clients that all need to get in simultaneously, this works well.

Another advantage to the *nix route is you can cron when the server is even listening for connections, so the rest of the day it just won't care. Helps reduce the chances of some miscreant wardialer getting in (though these days that doesn't happen as much, as most of the kids are too busy playing WoW and having script wars against each other's DSL lines).

[TurboGizzmo]

Server type? I used to set these up on linux/BSD, it's pretty simple. Also if it's not critical that they all dial in and receive at the same time, then stagger the connections (with some automatic retries in case one is getting deluged) and just use one modem. Unless you have a shit ton of clients that all need to get in simultaneously, this works well.

Another advantage to the *nix route is you can cron when the server is even listening for connections, so the rest of the day it just won't care. Helps reduce the chances of some miscreant wardialer getting in (though these days that doesn't happen as much, as most of the kids are too busy playing WoW and having script wars against each other's DSL lines).

Yup something like that....script each site to call every night....each site will have its own time to call. site1 9pm, Site 2 10pm, site 3 11pm.....call, connect to internet, batch script and send and receive of Outlook Express (keeping it cheap, plus some machines are old old) force hangup after set time.


The bigger challenge is to see if i can do the dialing to something like say a Magicjack.....yeah i am crazy....

[Devaclis]

Just make a small batch file to do it. Have it create a log or at least export the event logs to a shard folder. Have the host machine log failed and successful attempts and blah blah blah.

We made dozens of these systems for our software retail outlets in the early 90's so that they could connect to a *nix box and poll their daily accounting figures to corp. We got fancy with some of the scripting but you can make it as simple as you like.

I never like the auto dialer or 3rd party connectivity SW because it carried such a high overhead. I'd rather do it myself and know it works :)

[TurboGizzmo]

Just make a small batch file to do it. Have it create a log or at least export the event logs to a shard folder. Have the host machine log failed and successful attempts and blah blah blah.

We made dozens of these systems for our software retail outlets in the early 90's so that they could connect to a *nix box and poll their daily accounting figures to corp. We got fancy with some of the scripting but you can make it as simple as you like.

I never like the auto dialer or 3rd party connectivity SW because it carried such a high overhead. I'd rather do it myself and know it works :)

Sample of said scripts? :)

I need to research more on the scripting, I ordered some hardware to play with to make sure its possible before presenting it to a few clients......debating grabbing a magicjack too....

[Devaclis]

haha that was 19 years ago!

Lemme see if I can scrounge something up :)

[rforsythe]

You really don't need any more hardware than a modem here. The rest is all easily doable in the OS.

[Devaclis]

Carl can probably make you a script in an hour that would build a bridge, feed all of the chilren in Kansas and dial your modem :)

[TurboGizzmo]

Well some of the sites are Win 98/Win NT/WinXP so i want to make sure the solution is pretty cross platform compatible with the scripting. If a successful test run works I may push it and use it to push backups and accounting numbers like Devaclis did in the 90s :) Damn day job just gets in the way from scripting, building, testing :)

[rforsythe]

Windows supports task scheduling in all of those OS levels doesn't it? If so then it's easy to fire a batch job at a certain time. From there it's just PPP dialup, which every OS on the planet has supported for a long long time.

[Gregger]

Funny...There was a post on this on FB today too. :) :)