Last month, I discussed Internet commerce--ways to sell stuff on the Net.
This month I'll get back to more practical concerns and talk about real-world
issues such as dialing out from your Windows NT and Windows 95 network to the
Internet and taking advantage of port sharing.
SAPS: RAS's Other Half
NT's Remote Access Service (RAS) works well for dialing in to your NT server
or workstation, especially from another NT system or from Win95. But RAS won't
let one computer use a port on another computer on your network--no sharing.
This restriction is a problem in the typical office: Joe wants to call a BBS,
Maude has to dial up a credit-check bureau that's not on the Net, and Bill wants
to get his America Online (AOL) email. You don't want a modem and a phone line
for each person's computer. And making each person walk to the server to dial
out is inconvenient.
Several third-party companies have built software to fill this gap in NT so
that any PC on a network can do asynchronous communications through a shared
port. I'm most familiar with SpartaCom Asynchronous Port Sharing (SAPS), so I'll
concentrate on it. Such software fools a client PC into thinking it has an extra
serial port, although that port is on the network.
SAPS is reasonably priced by the number of users and number of ports being
shared. Even better, the two-user, one-port version is available for free
download on the TSP Web site.
Once you download the software, you can unpack the files. Be sure to print
and study the documentation before installing the package. Next, make sure RAS
is loaded and running. SAPS depends on RAS, so the SAPS server won't load until
RAS does. SAPS will just sit, halfway loaded, no message, until you fire up RAS.
Keep this fact in mind if you do anything to RAS, because it stops loading
automatically if you change its parameters. If that happens, you have to pop
open the Services control panel and re-enable RAS's automatic startup.
NT services are one of the big differences between NT and Win95. NT services
are like UNIX daemons and fill the same niche. Services perform a function in
the background, and no component is visible to the user; like RAS, they're
controlled through separate front-end software.
In the example of a SAPS installation, suppose you share a port enabled for
RAS dial-in, probably the one you use to call the system on those rare times you
go home. SAPS is a good citizen: When it needs the port, it uses NT services to
take the port from RAS, uses the port for dial-out, and then hands it back to
RAS. (You can separately assign ports to RAS and SAPS, but in this small-office
example, you have only one modem for both dial-in and dial-out.)
As SAPS installs its server software, a SAPS control panel will appear.
Open it, click Shares, and select the serial port you want RAS and SAPS to
share. Give it a resource share name, such as modemone. The clients will use
this name. (You can add an access password here.) Save changes, and open the
Services control panel. Stop and restart the SAPS service to make your changes
effective. Make sure both SAPS and RAS are started and will start automatically
in the future.
Testing SAPS
From a Win95 workstation, click Add/Remove Programs, and install the client
software (which, of course, you can leave in a convenient shared directory on
the network). The SAPS client software will ask for a serial number and key, and
the freeware version's instructions supply two sets. The serial number is 16
digits, all uppercase. The key is 8 digits (this fact isn't clear in the
documentation). You can install the serial numbers on as many computers as you
want, but you can't share them between clients.