Gordon Henderson wrote:[color=blue]
> In article <jir*9z+-r@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>,
> Theo Markettos <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>[color=green]
>>Desk Rabbit <nospam@example.com> wrote:
>>[color=darkred]
>>>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=darkred]
>>>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.[/color]
>
>
> I think you'll struggle to get 56K.[/color]
Indeed. 56K back to back doesn't work. From Wikipedia:-

"56k modems can only work at 56k if there is one pulse-code modulation
to analog conversion in the path between the internet service provider's
digital equipment and the user's modem. When this is not the case or
when two 56k modems are used to communicate with each other they will
generally fall back to 33.6 kbit/s using V.34 analog modulation. The 56
kbit/s transmission exploits the fact that most telephone exchanges are
interconnected with digital lines and so can use more efficient
transmission techniques over twisted-pair lines."

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/56k_modem[/url]