[PLUG] AOL substitute

[Anthony Schlemmer]

I would guess that the larger dialup ISPs would have POPs all over the 
place. When my wife was doing some work for Boeing she was able to get 
a discounted account through GTE.net/Verizon.net. She still has the 
account and has dragged her laptop to various places around the country 
and has always found a local POP number. 

My wife uses Win98 but I've had a Linux system dial-in and connect to 
Version.net without any problems. I used the modem setup in YaST2 under 
SuSE and created multiple providers. With the modem setup, I get this 
little "plug" icon in the system panel of the KDE desktop once the 
modem and provider stuff was setup. Once the little "plug" thing is 
started, the modem automatically dials the specified provider that I 
have selected when outgoing packets are detected. 

If I right mouse-click in the "plug" icon when the connection is 
disconnected, I can change the provider being called. I think wvdial is 
used as part of this magic setup. I've gotten lazy over the years and 
am happy to set the modem stuff up using YaST2. In my old Slackware 
days I wrote shell scripts, chat scripts and used "diald" to get "pppd" 
to an automatic PPP connection when outgoing packets were detected.

The downside is even though the number is local, many hotels charge for 
local calls so it's not necessarily a free phone call. Maybe that's 
different with an 800 number being called from a hotel room. I guess 
too that if it's a single 800 number then setting things up is alot 
easier since multiple POP numbers are not required. I usually do some 
research and setup my wife's laptop before she leaves on a trip so the 
new POP numbers have been added to the dialup setup. Windows is pretty 
flexible here and multiple locations can be specified and profiles can 
be setup to dial 9 to get an outside line through the hotel's PBX 
system. I know I can do this in SuSE as well but the setup just isn't 
as easy as Windows IMHO.  

As long as an ISP supports connection via PPP without some other cruft 
software being run it should be possible to get Linux to connect. And 
as long as the mail servers support standard protocols like POP3, SMTP, 
and/or IMAP Linux shouldn't work. Probably the biggest hassle is 
getting the modem and dialup providers setup. I didn't think this was 
too bad with SuSE's YaST2 but it wasn't as easy as setting up an 
ethernet card IMHO.

Tony

On Wednesday 24 July 2002 13:10 pm, Michael Montagne wrote:
> I have a friend who clings to MS because she needs AOL.  The reason
> she needs it is because she wants to have internet access when she
> travels the country.  At home she uses DSL but on the road she can
> dial an 800 number and access the web.  At a reasonable price even.
> Are there any OSS soloutions to this this issue?  Netzero does not
> support Linux.

-- 
Anthony Schlemmer
aschlemm at attbi.com