Creating a WAN from home

[Kenny Graves]

Hello I am running a small 3 pc lan at home. IT is a 10/100 lan running at 100 mps with CAT 5 cables. I have a dial-up ISP. I have a friend with a dial-up ISP also he stays about 1 mile away. I want to add him to my network by creating a WAN. How should I do this. He has a differnet ISP if think means anything. We are both running windows 98 he has the SE version. Both of us have 56k modems. Any ideas. Thanks alot

[ktwebb]

When you are both connected to the internet you are already on a WAN. The internet is a WAN. If you want to transfer files, use FTP, or an IRC client. You can use netmeeting take control of his desktop if you want to go that far. As far as games, if they use TCP/IP you are all set. Just connect to his IP in a game. Since your friend is using SE, he can create a dialup server and you can use dialup networking to connnect to his PC with a direct connection.

[This message has been edited by ktwebb (edited 11-23-1999).]

[ANTONIO E GUERRA]

I would like to recommend softwares such as Pc Anywhere or Desklink. It will create a very similar connection. I also agree that netmeeting or any other similar software will do the trick.

[Jobiality]

Try This Out.....It'll Help Greatly http://winfiles.cnet.com/howto/peercon.html

[Axel]

A WAN implys that you have a connecting circuit hardwired between gateways. You'll have to go through the telephone network unless you want to buy a few repeaters and 2 miles of cable. PC Anywhere will probably be too slow - that program is good for remote control, but the software overhead is too great for any kind of real network performance. Even if you dial each other's modems directly, at 56K, you aren't going to get near network performance. You have to get ISDN or ADSL with terminal adapters at both ends and hard I.P. addressing ( most ISP's run DHCP for dymanic IP addressing upon log-in ) to get to true WAN status, but that might be too pricy for what you want. You might get close with cable modems at both ends.

[ktwebb]

Fair enough Axel, the internet is not what is commonly thought of as a WAN, but it is one big network. If you want to get technical, the company I work for sells Wide Area Network solutions that are not hardwired. We use 11 Meg FM radio devices. This is a route that is open to you Kenny, but it would be well outside of what you would want to pay I think, but well within the limitations of the signal at 1 Mile. The bridges carry data at 11 meg for up to 15 miles. 5.5 meg to 25 miles. You do need line of sight, however.