Setting up a home network using an AOL dial-up connection is more difficult than expected. Last week, I tried to do this, and it took me quite some time, although the solution was easily found on the Internet.

It all seemed so simple. I had two computers, both running Windows XP, to connect. The goal? Accessing shared folders and the client being able to go online through the host dial-up connection. The host runs AOL 8.0. Both computers use a firewall.


I used the standard Win XP network wizard, guiding me through setting up the network. All seemed to go well. At one point in time, accessing shared folders worked. Sure, it took some fiddling around with the firewalls, but it did work. I figured the next step would be simple, because obviously the network connection worked. At home, that was all I had to do to get my network running, although my host is connected to ADSL.

When the AOL home network didn't run, I figured it was because of a difference between networks for dial-up and ADSL. That wasn't it though. After quite some time spent experimenting with all kinds of options, I did what I should've done before starting out: go online to read up on setting up a network for this specific configuration.

It turns out that I'm not the only one who had a hard time getting such a set up to work. I found out that other people use proxies to connect the client to the Internet, with the proxy running on the host. The one proxy that kept turning up was that of
AnalogX. It was a breeze to install, and since then, the network runs smoothly. At least, I haven't heard any complaints yet