Huge request for info/help

Hi gang,

Living out in the woods, it's finally starting to really grate on my nerves
having dial-up internet access. There's two seperate machines here, one runs
win98se, and mine runs SuSE 9.2 Pro, which leaves us to having two seperate
dial-up accounts...it sucks.
I've been looking into satellite connections, and got to thinking if we just
got the one modem/card for one machine, then networked the two machines
together so we could both use the single connection, we'd be doing a hell of a
lot better than we are now.
So, my question(s) are these:

If I set my system up as the one to have the modem/card from the satellite,
should I first make sure I can get it working and *then* get 2 nic's, one each
for our systems and network them together? --I don't want her to see my system
or files, and I don't want to see hers, so I won't need Samba, correct? Just
want to keep it as simple as possible.

Would *my* system be what's termed a 'server'? Will her system just be able to
just transparently go through my system and its firewall to get on the internet
with no troubles?

Will my firewall be better than what she could have on a W98 machine?

I've tried to read up on networking for a long time, at least the past 6
months or so, but it just doesn't seem to sink in and make much sense to me at
all.
As for the satellite connection I was thinking about, it's Nebulink
<www.nebulink.net>. They have a PCI card and linux software for it and all, but
I'm sure I'll be asking them for a lot of help setting it up, it's the 'after'
that, that I'm really worried about, heh. The actual networking of our two
systems together here in the house.
The only other satellite setup is from Direcway, and from what I've read, the
DS6000 (something-6000) is supposed to work fine with linux, but I despise
their Fair Use Policy, because I'm disabled and I'm on the computer more than
12 hours a day at least (hey, I'm easily amused, okay? Heh) and I'd have to pay
too much more for a higher download capacity.

Does anyone perhaps have a setup similar to what I (hope) I explained I'm
wanting to do here? I'm just real confused as to even where to start, but I
can't stand being stuck on dial-up anymore.
I hope I've explained well enough what I'm trying to get done, and someone can
help me get started. I'd sure appreciate it, and apologize for the size of this
request, but it seemed the best place to ask for help.
Anyway, if anyone needs more info or something cleared up, just holler back
and I'll try to do my best to help you help me.

John

Johnny B. wrote:

> Hi gang,
>
> Living out in the woods, it's finally starting to really grate on my nerves
> having dial-up internet access. There's two seperate machines here, one runs
> win98se, and mine runs SuSE 9.2 Pro, which leaves us to having two seperate
> dial-up accounts...it sucks.
> I've been looking into satellite connections, and got to thinking if we just
> got the one modem/card for one machine, then networked the two machines
> together so we could both use the single connection, we'd be doing a hell of a
> lot better than we are now.
> So, my question(s) are these:
>
> If I set my system up as the one to have the modem/card from the satellite,
> should I first make sure I can get it working and *then* get 2 nic's, one each
> for our systems and network them together? --I don't want her to see my system
> or files, and I don't want to see hers, so I won't need Samba, correct? Just
> want to keep it as simple as possible.
>
> Would *my* system be what's termed a 'server'? Will her system just be able to
> just transparently go through my system and its firewall to get on the internet
> with no troubles?
>
> Will my firewall be better than what she could have on a W98 machine?
>
> I've tried to read up on networking for a long time, at least the past 6
> months or so, but it just doesn't seem to sink in and make much sense to me at
> all.
> As for the satellite connection I was thinking about, it's Nebulink
> <www.nebulink.net>. They have a PCI card and linux software for it and all, but
> I'm sure I'll be asking them for a lot of help setting it up, it's the 'after'
> that, that I'm really worried about, heh. The actual networking of our two
> systems together here in the house.
> The only other satellite setup is from Direcway, and from what I've read, the
> DS6000 (something-6000) is supposed to work fine with linux, but I despise
> their Fair Use Policy, because I'm disabled and I'm on the computer more than
> 12 hours a day at least (hey, I'm easily amused, okay? Heh) and I'd have to pay
> too much more for a higher download capacity.
>
> Does anyone perhaps have a setup similar to what I (hope) I explained I'm
> wanting to do here? I'm just real confused as to even where to start, but I
> can't stand being stuck on dial-up anymore.
> I hope I've explained well enough what I'm trying to get done, and someone can
> help me get started. I'd sure appreciate it, and apologize for the size of this
> request, but it seemed the best place to ask for help.
> Anyway, if anyone needs more info or something cleared up, just holler back
> and I'll try to do my best to help you help me.
>
> John
I don't have any answers for you, but what woods are you in? I'm in the woods of N.
Calif., 60 mi. NE of Sacramento. I might be interested in following your story if you
are near me. I heard this morning that a StarBand satellite suddenly went out of
service not too many hours ago. I believe they said it knocked out service to Humbolt
users in N. Calif, and maybe all of Florida. I'm using a phone dial-up.

A few years back, I came across a fellow who lived in the mountains of S. Calif, I
believe, and he could see the densily packed homes in the valley below him. No hope
for DSL he thought. One day he bought a astronomical telescope, and on a whim started
looking for DSL connectors on the homes below. He contacted the owner, and set up an
antenna to feed the signal up to him, and got his DSL that way. No chance of that
here, but we do have the beginning of some company that provides a distributive
antenna on a mountain top here. I can't get it either, but a friend across the canyon
from me can. He's offered to connect me up. However, there's increasing hope that DSL
may yet come up the hill to me.

--
Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet
(Formerly Homo habilis, erectus, heidelbergensis and now sapiens)

"The free market is a great thing--we should try it sometime."
-- Jim Hightower

Web Page: <home.earthlink.net/~mtnviews>

Johnny B. wrote:

> As for the satellite connection I was thinking about, it's Nebulink
> <www.nebulink.net>. They have a PCI card and linux software for it and
> all, but I'm sure I'll be asking them for a lot of help setting it up,
> it's the 'after' that, that I'm really worried about, heh. The actual
> networking of our two systems together here in the house.
> The only other satellite setup is from Direcway, and from what I've
> read, the
> DS6000 (something-6000) is supposed to work fine with linux, but I despise
> their Fair Use Policy, because I'm disabled and I'm on the computer more
> than 12 hours a day at least (hey, I'm easily amused, okay? Heh) and I'd
> have to pay too much more for a higher download capacity.
>
> Does anyone perhaps have a setup similar to what I (hope) I explained
> I'm wanting to do here?

I haven't used satellite connections, but I think that if you get your linux
box to internet with it, the rest should be easy. In Suse, there should be
a possibility for "connection sharing", so if you have the windows and
linux machines connected with ethernet cards and a crossover cable, it
should just be a matter of few clicks (google for "connection sharing suse
9.2" in www and groups).

In principal what you want is "ip masquerading" (google for ip masquerading
howto), but I think it really is automated in Suse. The win machine will
use the linux machine as a "gateway" (google for linux networking howto).
No samba needed. Suse's Firewall or that of IP masquerading howto should be
good.

I hope this helps a bit,

Panu

I used to have a win98 box with internal Intel DSL modem - no linux
drivers, and a linux box. It was a simple matter to set up win98 with
internet connection sharing, and set the linux box to use the win98
computer as gateway.

Johnny B. wrote:
> Hi gang,
>
> Living out in the woods, it's finally starting to really grate on my nerves
> having dial-up internet access. There's two seperate machines here, one runs
> win98se, and mine runs SuSE 9.2 Pro, which leaves us to having two seperate
> dial-up accounts...it sucks.
> I've been looking into satellite connections, and got to thinking if we just
> got the one modem/card for one machine, then networked the two machines
> together so we could both use the single connection, we'd be doing a hell of a
> lot better than we are now.
> So, my question(s) are these:
>
> If I set my system up as the one to have the modem/card from the satellite,
> should I first make sure I can get it working and *then* get 2 nic's, one each
> for our systems and network them together? --I don't want her to see my system
> or files, and I don't want to see hers, so I won't need Samba, correct? Just
> want to keep it as simple as possible.
>
> Would *my* system be what's termed a 'server'? Will her system just be able to
> just transparently go through my system and its firewall to get on the internet
> with no troubles?
>
> Will my firewall be better than what she could have on a W98 machine?
>
> I've tried to read up on networking for a long time, at least the past 6
> months or so, but it just doesn't seem to sink in and make much sense to me at
> all.
> As for the satellite connection I was thinking about, it's Nebulink
> <www.nebulink.net>. They have a PCI card and linux software for it and all, but
> I'm sure I'll be asking them for a lot of help setting it up, it's the 'after'
> that, that I'm really worried about, heh. The actual networking of our two
> systems together here in the house.
> The only other satellite setup is from Direcway, and from what I've read, the
> DS6000 (something-6000) is supposed to work fine with linux, but I despise
> their Fair Use Policy, because I'm disabled and I'm on the computer more than
> 12 hours a day at least (hey, I'm easily amused, okay? Heh) and I'd have to pay
> too much more for a higher download capacity.
>
> Does anyone perhaps have a setup similar to what I (hope) I explained I'm
> wanting to do here? I'm just real confused as to even where to start, but I
> can't stand being stuck on dial-up anymore.
> I hope I've explained well enough what I'm trying to get done, and someone can
> help me get started. I'd sure appreciate it, and apologize for the size of this
> request, but it seemed the best place to ask for help.
> Anyway, if anyone needs more info or something cleared up, just holler back
> and I'll try to do my best to help you help me.
>
> John


There is no reason that you HAVE to have two dialup accounts. I can be
done with just one dialup. A simple thing to do would be to use
"connection sharing" from your primary machine. I do not use SuSE, but
in mandrake at the control center is a setup up for connection sharing.
I do know that windows has this ability. I do beleive that it will
require two nic cards on the host machine though.

As for the satellite service Nebulink is kinda like a one way service.
The download is from the satellite and the upload is via dialup. I use
to have a service called wantweb, which was the same thing. VERY SLOW !
Max upload was 33.6 K for Directway they are both upload and download
from satellite. There are several problems whith this. Upload speed is
limited, also there is a delay in time a request is made and time that
it responds. Why ? this is due to the time it takes the signal to
travel from the customer to the satellite and than back to the ground
station where you will access the internet at. This should really only
cause problems for those that play games online. And than there is the
upfront equipment cost and monthly service.

I guess if I had to decide on one of the two I would go with DWAY and
buy a broadband router and connect my machines to it. Sould be straight
forward to connect and could hook up multipal machines.

Good luck on whatever way you decide to go!



================================================
FindMoore.Net~Finding Your Place on the Web!
http://findmoore.net
Linux Registered User #188968
================================================

begin Johnny B. piddled around and finally wrote:

> Hi gang,
>
> Living out in the woods, it's finally starting to really grate on my nerves
> having dial-up internet access.

<snip>

> I hope I've explained well enough what I'm trying to get done, and someone
> can
> help me get started. I'd sure appreciate it, and apologize for the size of
> this request, but it seemed the best place to ask for help.
> Anyway, if anyone needs more info or something cleared up, just holler back
> and I'll try to do my best to help you help me.
>
> John

Thanks folks, each of you added a little something different, and that helped
quite a bit. It's a bitch when one has severe AADD, lots of things during
reading get 'lost' after I start on the next paragraph, heh, so the learning of
networking has been bad hard on me.
Appreciate the help though. Y'all be good.

John