Sometimes it seems that the world has moved entirely to DSL, cable, and other forms of high-speed networking. But the reality is it hasn't -- most of the world is on dial-up, and even in the US the majority of Internet users are still on dial-up. Even in areas where high-speed access is available, dial-up still plays a useful role. For example, a business may not need high-speed access -- and can spend the money saved on hardworking, worthy employees. (Stop laughing, it could happen.) Or dial-up can fill a special need, such as for nightly batch uploads, for remote access, or for building an inexpensive WAN.

In this two-part series we're going to look at both dial-up and dial-in servers. A dial-up server is used to manage and share an Internet connection, whereas a dial-in server is for users to dial in to your network directly. Any Linux distribution comes with all the tools and protocols you'll need, including PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol), dialers, and NAT (Network Address Translation).

[ Read more ]