Networking two dial-up systems over long distances

[Infohawk]

Hi,

I'm looking for a networking situation for the following setup. I'm going to have two xp systems (one home, the other pro) that connect to the net via dial-up. I basically want to network the two when I feel like it. The two computers will be in different states so calling directly is probably not feasible given long-distance calls. Thus, I'm wondering if anyone has ideas for networking the two computers over dialup. Is it possible to receive dial-up connections in windows xp? How would I go about doing this? How do you network two xp systems over the internet? Can you administer an xp pro system from an xp home system? Would any 3rd party software be useful in connecting these two systems?

Let me know any details I can add.

Thanks

 

[MichaelD]

Wow, that's a good one...um.....

The problem is that with dialup, you get a different IP addy every time you connect; that makes it difficult to do anything like FTP.

Interesting question. Bump for you.

 

[Smilin]

If you have the computers directly dial each other you're going to have to pay long distance. Just have both of them dial locally into the internet and stay there. Then use VPN to setup a tunnel between them. It's all built into xp & 2000 so you don't need to buy any 3rd party stuff. Check the helpfiles on VPN it's pretty easy to do.

You can setup one of them to be a dial-up server though if you want to do that.

 

[Infohawk]

Let's say I do a VPN connection. How will I know what IP address to connect to? Like MichaelD said, the ip addresses change each time.

Is there a way to get my system to note it's ip and then email or something?

 

[Soybomb]

There are lots of dynamic dns services, I've used www.no-ip.com before. Register and run an app in the tray and everytime your IP changes it will update infohawk1.no-ip.com to your current IP address. Then just give your VPN software the domains to work with. It may not always be 100% accurate but it should be reasonably close. If not spend a couple bucks and get your ISP to assign you a static IP

 

[Infohawk]

Thanks for the help guys! Good stuff.

Is there anything shady about these dns providers? Why is it free? I realize services such as email are free and usually not shady but I'm just curious.

Thanks again

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Infohawk
Thanks for the help guys! Good stuff.

Is there anything shady about these dns providers? Why is it free? I realize services such as email are free and usually not shady but I'm just curious.

Thanks again

I've seen these things quite cheap, but not free. They probably just bust out some advertising popups when anyone tries to hit port 80 at your address or something.

 

[Soybomb]

Many of them are free in the hopes that you'll buy a premium account just like the free email services and the like, except its probably alot less load for the dns.