Serial line internet.
For those of you who don't know, over winter break I recieved an old pentium laptop from my sister in law. I have installed several variants of linux on it with varying degrees of sucess. The main objective has been to get it connected to the internet somehow, so that I can update stuff on it with out it being a total pain in the ass.
I am now connected to the internet using a serial connection from this laptop to my other computer, which is connected to the campus live via ethernet. Its currently set up to do IP masquerading, so that my laptop can connect to the internet through it, and the network does not know of my laptop's existance.
It only gets 10.6 kb/s at the most, which is because even though it has a raw data rate of 14 kb/s, only 75% of that is actual data. The rest is packet headers and timing bits and other stuff needed to make the network work over serial line.
The reason I did all of this was so I could use only one cd to get debian on my laptop, do a base install (with no x-windows or any desktop), and then I could download only what I wanted or needed. For instance, the sound drivers are on something like cd 8 out of at least 14. Instead of taking 10 hours to get a bunch of cd's, it took a few hours to get everything over a slow connection.
A note to Andrew: since you haven't called back (I don't think), feel free to comment here about the con stuff.
I am now connected to the internet using a serial connection from this laptop to my other computer, which is connected to the campus live via ethernet. Its currently set up to do IP masquerading, so that my laptop can connect to the internet through it, and the network does not know of my laptop's existance.
It only gets 10.6 kb/s at the most, which is because even though it has a raw data rate of 14 kb/s, only 75% of that is actual data. The rest is packet headers and timing bits and other stuff needed to make the network work over serial line.
The reason I did all of this was so I could use only one cd to get debian on my laptop, do a base install (with no x-windows or any desktop), and then I could download only what I wanted or needed. For instance, the sound drivers are on something like cd 8 out of at least 14. Instead of taking 10 hours to get a bunch of cd's, it took a few hours to get everything over a slow connection.
A note to Andrew: since you haven't called back (I don't think), feel free to comment here about the con stuff.