Introduction
As noted in the dialup HOWTO, most modern modems are simply not supported. This makes those of use who still use dialup a bit frustrated. While wireless connectivity is becoming available in town centers, cafes, and hotels, there are those times when wireless is simply not available and we must resort to the ancient art of dialup.
I have personally found that Apple's AirPort base station, both the original 802.11b and 802.11g models with built-in modem and ethernet port, work very well as a portable (although somewhat large) dialup / ethernet / wireless router.
As an example, if staying at a hotel without ethernet, I simply call Earthlink from my cell to determine the local dialup number for that area. I then program this into the base station from OSX (one reason to keep the dual-boot). Once programmed, the base station auto-dials the moment I attempt to connect to it from my Netgear PCMCIA card. The only tricky part is getting the base station to _stop_ dialing which usually means just pulling the power plug.
If you happen to be conducting a late-night programming session in a hotel room (ie: before a tradeshow), it works very well to have the base station provide either dialup or ethernet through the wireless router of the base station ... but of course, we have never had to conduct such last minute engineering :)
This HOWTO was prepared by Kai Staats, Terra Soft
