In terms of chortle grin, slower than a snail dial up, I had to use dial up and ICS for about 5 years to network my computers together. Then 3G wireless become available in my area. So I use now still use the same ICS setup still. 3G wireless, at basically $60.00/mo and capped at 5GB/mo is not cheap, unlimited far faster 4G that may be coming to my area soon, but that does not help our OP. But still that same less than $20.00 60 foot cross over cable has been the biggest bargain in the world for me.
But as someone well experienced in the how to network more than 2 PC's together, maybe I can shed some insights. But I am dealing with my perspective of being a 4 computer owner in a 2 and only 2 computer user household. I have 2 main and modern desk top PC's, a slower very reliable backup computer, and a lap top, all of which need
to be kept updated for security reasons.
1. First, one must ask why anyone but a 2 PC user household would want to network 3 or more computers together using dial up. If one wants to do basic internet surfing, email, and light surfing, its actually quite feasable, but trying to watch video, or doing big downloads turns it into a guaranteed family feud as one user grabs all the limited bandwidth. But still it allows 2 users to use one phone line and one ISP at the same time. But if you do that with dial up, you lose the use of your land line phone, another $20.00 or so a month phone line can cure that or one can use something like callwave at 8 dollars a month to tell you if you have a telephone call you must field. Something very necessary for me, but other may not have that need.
So without networking all four computers together, something difficult or maybe impossible with ICS alone, how did I keep everything updated without a router on dial up?
And that answer is fairly easy, especially if one has plenty of crosover cable length and an extra desk and monitor. Because the concept of ICS negates the need for a router by relying on a host computer and a client computer. When networked together, the host computer has a network address of 192.168.0.1 and the client has a network address of 192.168.0.xxx where XXX is any number between 2 and 255. Once one decides on a host computer, its possible to successively set up ICS clients using the same xxx static address of the other three client computers. So bt naming all 3 client computers the same, calling all networks as the default of home and picking an address like 192.168.0.100 means one can use any of the 3 client computers interchangably by simply swapping which computer the cross over cable plugs into. And as a bonus, if all 3 client computers have a modem, you can dial into the same ISP in the single user situation. In terms of swapping files in all 4, I use USB zip drives and pen drives, so I can do all program and spyware updates as a download once, apply to all four computers that saves much time on dial up.
But still, if you want 3 or more users at the same time on dial up, you are pretty well in a modem situation. The problem is that few if any routers are still made for dial up anymore. And also be warned, all 56K dial up modems are not the same. Maybe all will do OK in a no phone line noise situation, but that is seldom the case for anyone. The fastest 56K modems I found were the old no longer made Agere modems with the scorpio chip sets. And even if you can find them on ebay, getting a driver for them can be a bitch. Most flavors of windows will auto find updated drivers when they connect, but the catch 22 is that you must be connected to the internet for that to happen. But with my phone line the agere modems could deliver 40 plus Kbit/sec actual throughput and brand new modems struggled to deliver 20 kbits/sec. The other thing to point out that various 2 phone line modems still exist out there that can boost dial up to a potential 106 kbits/sec. They may require that expensive second phone line but they add router ports.
I hope that helps you OP, or someone else, if not I have just wasted your time. But many people living in rural areas still only have dial up as an internet option at home. Having 3G or 4G wireless internet options is much better, but the routers for them are way more expensive that comparable cable or DSL routers. Which is why I am still using ICS.
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