The network host machine in my house is running windows xp (before anyone says the obvious - it's not my machine, i can't change the OS)

I've got internet connection sharing working fine, my debian machine can access the internet once the connection with the isp is established.

At the moment i'm using realvnc to access the windows desktop remotely and start the connection from there, but that's tedious. It'd be cool if i could just type (for instance) 'pon' in the linux shell and have the windows host connect, transparently.

Is it possible to set up the machines so that the windows host will dial up the isp when it's given a command from the linux client? What software would i need to setup on either of the machines to achieve this?

try wingate! this program can dial the isp whenever you need an internet connection. I haven't got any other clue in the moment

Yeah, it depends on how your XP box is dialing to your ISP.

If it uses a proprietary or specialised dial-in/login procedure, you might be stuck.

But! -- if you can use the native windows dialer to do it, you can use wingate, like ede says.

As for the specifics, I'm really not familiar with realvnc or XP for that matter. I dumped windows when 98 Second Edition was current

-Shade

Cool, i'll check out wingate then. Thx guys