Sharing Dial-up Connections

If you don't have or can't get broadband Internet access, you can

still share your Internet connection on your WLAN, but I wouldn't advise it. Even a good dial-up connection is slow, and, with more than one user online, it slows to a crawl. If you still want to make a dial-up connection available to the rest of the network, read on.

To share a dial-up connection, you can install connection-sharing software or use Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) that comes with Windows. ICS is functional and works reasonably well, but third-party software is often more configurable and efficient. Connection-sharing software essentially acts as a router and performs network address translation (NAT), which routes all IP traffic from the Internet to the appropriate computer on your WLAN.

After installing the connection-sharing software, you choose the connection that you wish to share (consult the software documentation) and configure network clients to connect to that computer for Internet access. The details of this depend on the software you are using as well as the type of AP that you have installed on your WLAN.

Remember, for other computers to be able to connect to the Internet, the computer with the dial-up connection must remained dialed in and turned on.