[KLUG Advocacy] OT: uPNP

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> there's one use for it that's pretty cool.  If you use Internet 
> Connection Sharing on a Windows XP (or 2000, I assume) machine to share 
> a dial-up connection, the gateway machine advertises the connection 
> through upnp and a client behind it can control when the modem dials and 
> hangs up.  This is awfully nice if the modem is on a shared phone line, 
> because it's very hard to explain to the computer when to autodial, when 
> to hang up, and when to just stay out of the way.
> Here's where I go back on topic:  Does anybody know how proprietary this 
> trick is, and whether the gateway machine could do the same under Linux 
> as it does under XP?  I know Linux makes a great firewall / gateway / 
> NAT router thing for a persistent connection, but how about remote 
> control of the modem?  I know you could shell in and dial that way and 
> such, but that's allowing way too many options for computer-illiterate 
> users to screw something up.

You can configure 'demand dialing'.  Whenever the gateway receives
traffic that needs to be routed to the external network it will raise
the connection (dial in this case) and connect;  then, usually, the
connection is torn down after a certain period of idle (no traffic).
This works well, we used it for years before DSL.

The solution for line sharing is (a) don't or (b) get a $5 phone blocker
from Radio Shack, these won't let an extension get signal if the line is
already off-hook.

Otherwise look around for a 'modem server'.  They're used to be quite a
few techniques for doing remote modem control but modems don't get much
attention these days (they are the #1 devices to eliminate from a
network) and remote control of a modem only works till it freaks out and
needs a hard reset.
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