Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!samsung!nstar!octogard!graham From: graham@octogard.UUCP (Graham Mainwaring) Newsgroups: comp.sys.novell Subject: Re: Dialing in to network Message-ID: Date: 11 May 91 08:02:34 GMT References: <1991May10.203925.10586@ux1.cts.eiu.edu> Organization: The Octopus's Garden BBS Lines: 35 bucacs@ux1.cts.eiu.edu (Carlos Dragonslayer Butler) writes: > Does anyone have any experience setting up a Novell network so that > users can dial in via modem and use the software? Can it even be done? It depends on just how ambitious you are. If you want a single-line dial in server, which can only have one user on at a time, you can run a program like pcAnywhere or Carbon Copy in dial-in mode. The users can then run programs on the dial-in machine, using their homw PCs as terminals. The programs don't run remotely, so there isn't any problem with trying to transmit big data files over the modem - you just transmit screen updates. If you want multiple lines, you can either have one machine per dial-in line, or you can try to do something with DesqView or Windows 3.0 to multitask several copies of pcAnywhere. It largely depends on which applications you want to run. Some applications don't respond well to a DesqView environment. Note - this all assumes that the applications you want to run are text-mode. While it is possible to do graphical applications with this sort of scheme, it is often glacially slow. It also assumes that the applications you want to run are, at least, only mildly misbehaved. If you have truly nasty applications (several popular 3270 emulators come to mind), you're just not going to make it work like this. If you can't get a pcAnywhere type solution to work, you're stuck with using a modem-to-LAN gateway, which actually transports your IPX packets across a dialup modem link. While this is (barely) tolerable if you're using a fast leased line, it's truly awful if your users have 2400-baud generic modems. However, (pretty much) anything that will run under NetWare will run in this mode. --- ...!nstar!octogard!graham (Graham Mainwaring) The Octopus's Garden BBS (919) 876-7213