Thinkpads Forum

Hey all,

I am new to WiFi and need a bit of advice.

I installed a WiFi card a while back because our county is getting county wide WiFi installed. But since it won't be finished until 2008, I have a idea.

Since I am stuck with dial-up for now, can a wireless modem be purchased and used to connect to the dial-up within in my home, freeing me from phone lines? Am I thinking the correct way or do I have to something else to eliminate the phone line connection in my home?

This was an idea I had last night, so I have done no research on this subject, except for this post. I would appreciate any input about this matter.

OGPIM :D

WiFi (aka 802.11a, b, g or n) radio systems work like this:

- a transmitter/receiver installed in your computer (be it desktop or laptop), in any of several different connection methods (USB, PCMCIA, MiniPCI, PCI or even ethernet)
- a matching receiver/transmitter "base station" which is then connected to a larger network of computers (i.e., the internet). Generally, this communication takes place using a broadband (cable, DSL, microwave, fiber optic, or satellite) connection.

I have not attempted to do what you are talking about, but I think I know what you want. It's the same thing that I have thought about if ever my DSL connection went down. Perhaps some of the other members here can jump in with their solutions. Here's my thoughts:

Since you say you are using dial-up at the moment, you must be using a "regular" modem to connect to your internet service provider (AOL). Installing a WiFi card in your laptop only gets you halfway there to getting rid of the phone line to your computer. You will need a matching receiver/transmitter. Normally this piece of equipment is called a "wireless router" or "(wireless) access point". The only problem with this is, as far as I knew up to now, there wasn't any simple (and cheap) piece of hardware that will do what you want. In researching this answer, I came across these articles:

Sharing a Dial-up Connection in a Broadband World
WiFlyer review by PC Mag

What you are attempting to do is fairly rare, but it appears to be possible to do if you can get the right equipment. You need a wireless router which supports what is usually called a "backup" connection method (the analog modem). However, as pointed out in the first article I quoted, the gear may not be commonly available. Also, "dial-out" on demand may not be possible. What this means is that you would not be able to simply launch a browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox and have the system automatically dial the modem for you; you may have to perfom some other task(s) to actually get the internet connection established and then disconnected when you are done.

There is a second method which may work for you: Internet Connection Sharing (ICS). This is a Windows facility for using one computer to share the resources of an internet connection. Basically you need to have a dedicated computer which is used as a "gateway" to the internet. It is the one that controls the dial-up modem and needs to be left on for the other computer(s) in your household to pass the data through. The drawbacks are the additional cost of the computer, the wireless system which needs to be installed in that computer and all of the software configurations which would enable such a connection.

By the way, please update your profile with your location as that may help provide you with a better answers to future questions. Thanks!.

rkawakami,

Thanks alot. The articals were interesting. I cannot use the 2 system idea currently. The second artical was almost exactly what I need. The switching between Broadband and dial-up is not a problem, as I don't have broadband at all. Also, as you may or may not know, when I installed my WiFi mini PCI card, I had to remove the existing network card, thus a network connection is now impossibible. Thus, any connection to the web must be via modem connection (phone line) or WiFi. I'll have to look at a few places to see if such a beast still exists locally. Maybe I can get a good used one at a trade show or a ham radio swap meet.

If anyone has another idea, or doing this know, please let met know how you do it, and/or, how it works for you.

OGPIM

The two system method is what I have seen the most. Several people in the town that I live in, use this method, since there are several wireless spots in town, but not every house has the ability to get a high speed connection (cable or DSL).

The two system setup is what I used until we got fiberconnect. I had W98 at the time and was fairly easy by making an "Internet Connection Sharing" disk, (which is an option in the "add Windows software" menu). It's very easy with W98 on all the sytems but gets tricky with any that have XP. If I remember right, the XP computer has to be the one dialing out. The only problem I had, the HP multimedia keyboard kept pinging the system and caused the modem to dial out on it's own. I also used a program called CallWave that recorded the voice of the person calling, (not in real time), so if it was important, I could get off-line and make the call.

Mine was all done with a wired Linksys sytem but could be done with a wireless. All the computers are connected wirelessly but the dial out would also be connected to the phone jack. If more than two people get downloading stuff, it really slows down but was very workable having two daughters that wanted on at the same time.

Random phones lifted off caused havoc, and anyone could cause the connection to hangup without warning.