Desk Rabbit <nospam@example.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> What you need is one of these
> [url]http://networking.ringofsaturn.com/RemoteAccess/Portmaster.php[/url][/color]

A bit more than I wanted :) And doesn't it require a POTS or ISDN line to
operate?
[color=blue]
> Seriously though, what are you *actually* trying to achieve? If you want
> to connect to your PC then use any one of the many remote control
> programs. Are you wanting to give a dialup service for clients and
> customers? If so use one of the many free dialup numbers such as
> [url]http://www.adial.co.uk/[/url]
> [url]http://www.free-dialup.net/[/url]
> [url]http://www.nocostdialup.co.uk/[/url][/color]

'Free' dialup comes from the same school as 'unlimited' broadband - ie it
isn't. If you use it for anything more than trivial lengths of time you end
up with a very large phone bill.

I'm wanting a dialup with a geographic number. I'm also wanting one that
doesn't become engaged or congested at busy times (which rules out GeoISP
and similar). It's an advantage for it to terminate in my network because
then I have control over onward routing, rather than at some random ISP. Of
course I could tunnel, but then I'd waste precious dialup bandwidth on the
encapsulation.

Now it seems to me that an ATA is more complex than a modem, so I can't see
why the PSTN-Internet interface couldn't accommodate a modem too. And get
better rates than an analogue-analogue connection because a device
synchronised to digital PSTN can do 56K.

I suppose the problem is the business model - Sipgate only make a tiny
amount from incoming calls and most of their revenue is from outgoing calls.
Such a system wouldn't have anything outgoing. But I'm not averse to paying
an up-front fee.

Theo