I want dialup access to the internet via my cable modem connection at home, more or less rolling my own ISP...

September 4, 2005 10:47 PM

I have a Mac at home running 10.3.9. I would like to plug a telephone line into the modem port and be able to call in to it while I'm on the road using my laptop. I don't need or want access to the files, I don't want or need to see the Tibook's screen, or control the computer at home. I just want dialup access to the internet via my cable modem connection at home, more or less rolling my own ISP. Is this possible? If not with my Mac, what about one of those AirPorts? I heard some of them have modems but some of them don't, anyone else doing anything like this?

I know you can share your internet connection from the "Sharing" System Preference, but I tried that. It seems to allow sharing one's network via WiFi or Ethernet, but not sharing via the modem port. If I missed something and you actually CAN do this using the "Sharing" System Preference, I'd love to hear about it.

posted by pwb503 to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Airport Extreme definitely has configuration options to make this happen.

To acheive it with the Mac at home, look into pppd. There's a half-baked tutorial for Jaguar (10.2) here.
posted by tomierna at 11:18 PM on September 4, 2005

No, you can't do this on a Mac out of the box by changing something in System Preferences.

What you're looking to set up on your TiBook is called a 'PPP Modem Pool.' I'm not sure if it is possible to do on 'New-World" Macs or PCs with WinModems. I'd venture that it probably isn't.
posted by blasdelf at 11:59 PM on September 4, 2005

"Finally, a reason to use your modem."
posted by Rothko at 12:41 AM on September 5, 2005