[welderpm]

How can I have two imac's online at the same time with one phone line? Or is this not possible?
Standard internal modem(56K) with dialup connection (earthlink).
The least cost method would be appreciated. Thanks

[abraxas]

look into a software called IPNetRouter or Surf Doubler

[Trixalia]

I believe that Earthlink (my ISP, too) charges the second user by the hour in addition to your monthly fee.

[Camelot]

Originally posted by Trixalia:
I believe that Earthlink (my ISP, too) charges the second user by the hour in addition to your monthly fee.

There's no way Earthlink (or any ISP) can tell if you have two machines running behind a router package like IPNetRouter, VicomSoft's Internet Gateway or SurfDoubler.

The way these packagaes work is that the main machine is the only one that talks to the ISP. Additional machines in your network all talk to the one running the routing software. As far as the ISP is concerned, they can only see the routing machine.

They might try to tell you different, but it's just not so.

[Trixalia]

Originally posted by Camelot:
There's no way Earthlink (or any ISP) can tell if you have two machines running behind a router package like IPNetRouter, VicomSoft's Internet Gateway or SurfDoubler.

The way these packagaes work is that the main machine is the only one that talks to the ISP. Additional machines in your network all talk to the one running the routing software. As far as the ISP is concerned, they can only see the routing machine.

They might try to tell you different, but it's just not so.

That's pretty interesting considering what's on their site under Simultaneous Usage:
http://www.earthlink.net/about/policies/rates.html

[Misha]

Earthlink's policy has to do with having *two* people dialing-up (*two* modems) at the same time with the same account.

You can use a routing package np...

[Camelot]

Originally posted by Trixalia:
That's pretty interesting considering what's on their site under Simultaneous Usage:
http://www.earthlink.net/about/policies/rates.html

Reading that page, they say "You are only allowed a single connection to the Internet using your username and password combination at any time. Any overlaps in usage is subject to an hourly fee."

This would still be the case when using IPNetRouter, Internet Gateway, et al. since you only have one connection (the router) to Earthlink. The numerous machines behind the router aren't seen. That clause seems to imply that you can't dial in from home while your sister/brother/spouse dials in from somewhere else using the same username/password.

That's not to say that they want you do to this, or that other ISPs won't have conditions that try to stop you from doing it. In any case, my point was that it could be done without the knowledge of the ISP... the morality of doing it is left to the individual.

[iSilver]

You will find that most ISP's allow (some begrudgingly), but don't support (ie tech support) or promote any other configurations than those accessed by the machine making the connection.

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[druber]

i don't think you're on any shaky moral ground by routing two computers to the net through one modem. it's mostly a question of bandwidth. if you're paying for 56k access, there's an obvious cap to how much data you can pull through the system. they set the rate based, to some extent, on that. dialing in with two or three computers at one time on one account doubles or triples your available bandwidth, but you're paying the same price. that's what they're guarding against. it doesn't matter if you network 20 macs behind a 56k modem, that modem can only connect at, what, 53k max. they won't support it, and you'll get sad performance if you're doing heavy surfing from both machines, but i don't see anything shady about it.