You you're using a linux machine as an internet gateway (IP masquerade)
for your local net then all you have to do is set it up to dial on
demand. The windows machines can all forget about com ports.
http://www.radiomind.com/soholinux/gateway-3.html
Matthew Moen wrote:
> I concur that just using TCP/IP is the way to go. Allowing requests
> to the internet to determine if the modem should dial might cause
> repeated dialing and hanging up. Diald has a bunch of cool tricks
> to get around this, but I used a different technique, last time I did
> this a few years ago.
>
> The box doing the dialing and routing was doubling as a samba fileserver.
> I set up a icon on everyone's desktop which was simply a batch file
> that copied a file from the local machine to the logged in user's
> home directory on the samba fileserver. Another batch-file-icon next to it
> removed this file. On the Linux box, I had a simple script running
> that would dial the isp if it found one of these files in an
> authorized user's home directory. When all of these files
> disappeared, it would hang up. Additionally, another script
> ran from cron every minute to remove any of these magic files
> in user's directories older than a half-hour, in the event that someone
> forgot to hang up.
>
> I'd give you these scripts, but I don't have them handy.
>
> There are other solutions to this problem such as setting up some sort of
> web interface to accomplish what my solution provides. You could
> set up a complicated diald configuration that was very picky about
> actually dialing up. These days, though, lots of non-browser things
> use http over port 80 in order to circumvent firewalls, so even
> a well configured diald setup will still cause unintended connections.
>
> The best and easiest solution, IMHO, is to get broadband if it's available.
> It's relatively cheap and you can share with your entire office either
> through a linux box, or through one of the many Linksys-type firewall
> devices out there.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 16, 2002 at 10:23:14PM -0400, Paul M Foster wrote:
>
>>On Tue, Apr 16, 2002 at 06:22:14PM -0400, Daniel MacLaren wrote:
>>
>>
>>>At work, we have two phone lines with modems that we want to share among
>>>10-13 people in our office. In the past, we used a product called
>>>Winport, by Lansource, to share these modems, but this setup is no longer
>>>working and Lansource is no longer in business.
>>>
>>>I've read the "Modem Sharing mini-HOWTO" and setting up the Linux box
>>>won't be a problem. Our problem is that we need a "COM-port redirector for
>>>TCP/IP" for our Windows clients - a program for Windows that can use the
>>>service on the Linux machine as a virtual COM port. The HOWTO recommends
>>>DialOut/IP from http://www.tactical-sw.com, but the information on
>>>licensing appears to be out of date (they want $1700 for 13 seats).
>>>
>>>Are there any alternatives to DialOut/IP?
>>>
>>>
>>Umm, this is probably a dumb question, but why not just set up a Linux
>>box that shares modems as a gateway? Then the only thing the Windows
>>boxes need to know is the address of the box and maybe the internet
>>nameservers. You can set the Linux box up so that whenever someone
>>requests an internet IP address, the modems dial out.
>>
>>I'm probably missing something about this whole thing, so I'll shut up
>>now. ;-}
>>
>>Paul
>>
>
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