flux@microsoft.com

arriages are full of conflict and compromise. One frequent point of contention in my marriage is, or more correctly was, the second phone line we used to dial out to our ISP. Just when I would start a 5MB download, my wife would come into the office saying she had to log on to check for a critical email. Just setting aside time to surf the Internet became an item to be scheduled in her Palm Pilot—subject, of course, to time-critical interruptions. Well, those days of conflict and strife are gone, thanks to my latest effort to achieve wedded bliss—buying an analog router.       A router is a standalone device that sits on a network, directing the flow of IP packets bound for a machine outside your network. Analog routers have either internal modems or multiple serial ports where you attach external modems. When the router detects an externally bound IP address, it automatically dials your ISP, logs on, and sends the packet out into the vastness of the Internet. Aside from the 15-second delay needed to make the initial connection, the router provides seamless integration between all the machines on the local network and the Internet. More importantly for family happiness, all the machines on the network can now access the Internet concurrently.       The box I purchased is a WebRamp M3 from a company called Ramp Networks, but they are available from 3Com, LinkSys, and others. If you have the skill and patience, you can configure Windows NT®, Windows® 2000, or the newest version of Windows 98 to share a modem. To do this you'll need to have the machine up and running continually. My development work tends to affect the stability of my PC, so using my primary system as the modem server is problematic. This left me with the decision to either dedicate a low-end PC to run the modem server, or buy an analog router. Given that the cost of each is somewhat less than $500, it seemed prudent to buy the router because of its turnkey simplicity.       Setting up the box was simple. My WebRamp M3 consists of a four port 10 Mbps Ethernet hub plus three serial ports for external modems. I chose a model with external modems for the flexibility of using the best modem I could find. Configuring the network consisted of setting up all the machines on the network to look for a DHCP server to serve their IP addresses and hooking the boxes together. The M3 is also a DHCP server so it provides all the IP addresses. The M3 will also work with hardcoded IP addresses if your setup needs that. You can tune the served and reserved IP addresses through HTML-based configuration pages served by the router. That's also how you configure the modem initialization strings and ISP logon data and query its current status. For the initial setup, the M3 walked me through a series of setup wizard HTML pages. I had the box up and running in no time at all.       The router can use all three modems in parallel if you have available phone lines and three separate logon accounts. I only have one, but I was still surprised at the performance. While I have not performed any benchmarks to get hard data, the performance of the link through the router seems faster than simply driving the modem directly through Dial-up Networking in Windows NT 4.0 at the identical modem connect speed—not that I'm complaining, mind you.       One limitation of my unit is its lack of support for Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP). The M3 does support it, but it's a rather pricey firmware upgrade as listed on the Ramp Networks Web site (http://www.rampnetworks.com). For the retail price given on the site, I'll just dial in directly on the occasions I need PPTP.       The only drawback I've found to using the router is that it hogged my second line, so faxes weren't getting through. Although it's simple to configure the M3 to log off after a timeout period, the redialing delay was annoying. The delay forced me to set my email program to check for mail so frequently that the link was up continually. However, this seamless Internet connection made the home office seem like the office network, though a bit slower than the office T1. After a week of using the M3, it was time to call the phone company and add a third line. Now we have one voice, one fax, and one line for the router.       Of course, the solution to the problem of multiple lines is DSL. Its flat-rate pricing and higher speed make the M3 look more like a Yugo. But that only works if your phone company provides DSL and your home is within the range of your phone company's local exchange. That still leaves most of the United States to connect across old-fashioned analog lines.       While many of these analog routers are priced out of the reach of home users, a new generation of boxes is priced lower. Ramp's new 200i router with a built-in modem, a serial port for a second modem, and a four-port hub is priced at $370 according to their Web site. To that, you'll have to add the cost of Ethernet cards in all your home boxes at around $30 per system. This brings a two-system setup to $430. High for home use, but then again, what price are you willing to pay for wedded bliss?

From the October 1999 issue of Microsoft Internet Developer.