[Sunhelp] How to make my machine a node on a network with dialup?

[turtle]

>Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 13:05:08 +0200
>From: Peter S=F6derholm <PSM at berifors.se>
>To: sunhelp at sunhelp.org
>Subject: [Sunhelp] How to make my machine a node on a network with dialup?
>
>I'm not sure I exactly know what I'm talking about here so this question ma=
>y
>potentially be rather silly...
>
>I have configured my Sparc to dial in to a remote host which is also a Spar=
>c
>running Solaris 7 (SS20 i think) using PPP.
>
>Now I wonder how I can change my own computers ip address so that I could
>telnet in both directions, that is from the remote host to my own computer,
>or how could I find out what my IP address is? As I understand it my
>computer should be a node with an ip address on the hosts network and I
>should be able to communicate in both directions. Telnetting and ftping to
>the remote host works fine and also from there to another machine if I run =
>a
>remote session via telnet.

Try ifconfig -a to see which ip address was assigned to your modem interface
when you connected to the remote ppp server (the modem interface should be
something like ipdptp0).

>
>I can also ftp to myself locally by using the address 127.0.0.1 which is in
>the /etc/hosts however on the remote host telnetting to this address
>connects to the remote host not to my machine, which seems logical if the
>127.0.0.1 is reserved for the local machine.

Yes, the 127.0.0.1 address is the loopback address and will always point
back to whichever machine makes a request of it.

>
>If I could telnet from my remote host I could use it as a gateway perhaps
>and connect from somewhere on the internet via the remote host (ISP) and
>home to my computer if I had programmed it to connect via the modem (perhap=
>s
>at a certain time of day).
>

This is easy once you know how to figure out what your current ip address is.
I'm assuming that you have a dynamic PPP connection (meaning that your ip
address changes each time that you connect to this remote host). If that is
the case then the trick is knowing which ip address you have when your machine
connects to the network. There are a few tricks you can do for this, but from
reading your post I would say the best one for you to use is to have the following line
ifconfig ipdptp0|grep inet|awk '{print $2}'
executed a short time after a PPP connection is made and then have the results
emailed to you so that you know the machine is connected and what its current
address is. If you have a static ip address then this isn't necessary, just
memorize what your address is.
Also, if you have any networked computers at home you can use ipf and natd 
and all of the machines will share the modem connection as if it were their
own (pretty much).

>(the network is the computer right, with internet thats a pretty biiig
>computer : -)

Actually a network is communication between computers, not one massive
distributed computer.

david hansen