How to Get Email on the Road

Dave and Helen Damouth www.damouth.com

minor updates 20 October 2006

One of the most frequent questions asked by new RVers is "How can I get my EMail while I'm traveling?"  In the following document, I'll describe in detail the various methods that have worked for me.  I'll also mention, in less detail, methods that others have used, but with which I have no personal experience. This article is focussed on hard-wired ("landline") telephones. Cellphones, satellite internet, and WiFi will be covered in separate articles.

Regardless of where you hook up to a phone, is is very important that you set your software up so that the process of dialing the phone, sending previously composed outgoing mail, and retrieving incoming mail is as streamlined and automatic as possible.   With most EMail software, you can adjust the settings options to do all of this with a single mouse click. 

Internet Service Providers (ISP):   Most people will access their EMail service via the Internet.  The company who  provides your connection to the Internet is called an ISP. Strictly speaking, a few EMail providers are not ISP's since they may offer only EMail and and may not offer direct Internet access to you.  For simplicity I'll generally ignore this distinction.  

How you access your own ISP while on the road depends on which type of ISP you use when not traveling.   Some ISP's  make access while traveling easier or cheaper than others, so if you'll be full-timing, or even just expect to  travel a lot, you may want to change to a different ISP.  Some people use their employer's ISP at home, which may present special problems when traveling, because of the extra layers of security which large industrial companies may impose. Those people who use WebTV at home can't use it on the road and will need a different service while travelling.   The typical Internet connection currently offered by satellite TV companies also is not useful on the road, since it requires a telephone connection while in use. (However, there are now at least two companies which are offering two-way satellite Internet service without requiring a telephone line).

Local ISP:  Many people use an ISP which serves only their own community. This ISP will have a local phone number in your own town, but no other direct means of telephone access.  This means that if you want to access your ISP while traveling, you'll have to make a long distance telephone call to the same phone number you call from home.  If you are on the road only for brief vacations, and only want to download EMail, this may be a reasonable thing to do - particularly if you have an inexpensive calling card.  A day's worth of EMail for most people is under two minutes of connect time on a good phone, and using my Escapees calling card costs 13.5 cents per minute (plus the 30 cent federal PSP charge, if I'm calling from a pay phone).  Spending 57 cents to get a day's mail isn't a bad arrangement.

A prepaid calling card can be considerably cheaper. The Sam's Club AT&T card costs about 3.3¢ per minute. See Using a Calling Card to Dial Your ISP for more information.

The only difference between calling on the road and calling from home is that you have to tell your dialer application to dial a "1" and the area code as well as the local number.  You can also set your dialer to automatically dial all those extra numbers necessary to connect using your calling card. 

A local ISP may also be accessible from other ISP's via the Internet.  This means that if you can get Internet access as a guest using someone else's ISP (a friend or relative, a cybercafe, or a public machine at a local library), then you can transfer your EMail from your local ISP, via the internet and the ISP on which you are a guest,  to the computer you are using temporarily.  Not all ISP's provide this capability - you need to ask your ISP about it. 

National ISP:  There are several Internet Service Providers who operate across the entire United States (and perhaps Canada).  Relative to a local ISP, they may cost slightly more, but provide several advantages such as:

  • A national network of local phone numbers - ranging from several hundred to several thousand cities where the ISP can be accessed with a local call.
  • An 800 number, for use when in an area where a local number isn't available. This is very important to many full-time RVers - since the nicest places to camp generally aren't close to a big town, and aren't likely to be within the calling area of a local access number.  Use of the 800 number costs extra - typically  8 to 10 cents per minute of actual use.
  • Dependability!  The larger companies are likely to have multiple servers running simultaneously, and have redundant equipment which can quickly be brought on-line to replace a computer which fails.  They also have a larger number of skilled employees, so that there will be multiple people on duty around the clock, every day.   All this adds up to fewer and shorter times when you cannot access your mail or the Internet because of equipment or software failures at the ISP.
  • Longevity!  Small local ISP's come and go, sometime going out of business with little warning.  Many are shoestring operations, surviving with very little money and a lot of optimism.  Some are sidelines of larger companies in some other business, perhaps the local telephone company, and the large company won't hesitate to discontinue the ISP operation if it ceases to be profitable.  If a well-known national ISP goes out of business, it will be due to a merger or acquisition.  In this case, the Internet address generally survives even after the company disappears.  As an example, my own ISP, Sprynet, was a division of Compuserve at the time I first subscribed.  Compuserve was sold to AOL.  Subsequently, the Sprynet division was sold by AOL to Mindspring. Subsequently, Mindspring merged with Earthlink, with Earthlink being the surviving company name.  Through all this, my own EMail address and Website URL has not changed.

    Your personal EMail and Website address can become a very important part of your identity. For many of us, and particularly for full-time travelers, it is becoming the primary way for friends and businesses to contact us, particularly for full-time travelers  If your address changes, it is a major hassle to identify and notify all of the people who need to know how to reach you.  If your ISP goes out of business suddenly, there will be no forwarding service, and no way for someone to contact you, unless you are able to identify and notify everyone who might have had your old   EMail or Web address (an almost impossible task).  
  • A few of the National ISP's also operate in Canada and perhaps Mexico, and may even have service in major cities in the rest of the world.  Some of these companies also provide an 800 number for Canada.  National ISP's are familiar names - Mindspring, AOL, Earthlink, Compuserve, etc.  They generally cost slightly more than a local ISP - but in my opinion, the small extra cost buys important extra benefits.

Prepaid or Pay-by-the-minute ISP: BAMnet ( www.BAMnet.com ) is an ISP with an 800 number (which works in the contiguous 48 states only) that charges 4.5 to 6.5 cents/minute on a prepaid basis or 6.5 cents/minute on a pay-as-you-go basis, billed to your local home telephone number.  (If you don't have a "home" telephone, or if your home telephone company doesn't support third-party billing, you're stuck with the prepaid option).   If you use only a few hours of Internet time per month, and if you don't feel committed to your current ISP, this is a very inexpensive way to get on the Internet.  It works with a cell phone too!  Juno (plus a Sam's Club prepaid calling card if you're in the boondocks) will be a bit cheaper, if you can stand the incessant advertising on your screen.

MaGlobe is another prepaid Internet plan. This one has a great many local dial-up numbers for $.57 per hour, and an 800 number for 3.3¢ per minute in the contiguous 48 states. An 800 number for Alaska, Canada, and Hawaii is also available, at a somewhat higher cost. The per-minutes charges are lower than BAMnet, but there is a minimum payment of $15 per calendar year (with unused amounts carried over to the next year). You should estimate your annual usage, and then calculate which company will be cheaper. Local numbers in many foreign cities (including six cities in Mexico) are also available

Free Internet (including E-Mail):  {Note added 6/21/05: Juno, as well as most of its "free Internet" competitors, have stopped offering the free service, except for "webmail" (see below). The rest of this paragraph is of historical interest only}. Juno is the best known of several companies which offer "free" Internet access.  They provide a network of local numbers across the country, but do not provide an 800 number.  (As of Feb. 20, 2003, I estimate that Juno has 5785 local numbers, of which a few are in Canada and the rest in the USA).  This service isn't really free, since in return for the EMail service, you are giving Juno a portion of your computer screen for displaying advertisements.  If you don't mind the time spent downloading these advertisements, and the screen space devoted to displaying them, then this may seem like a good deal.   Juno, in particular, has a significant disadvantage:  Your accumulated Email is apparently downloaded to your computer  as one big compressed file.  This minimizes the time spent on-line.  But if your computer crashes during or immediately after  the download, it is possible to permanently lose the entire group of messages.  Most other EMail services use highliy reliable protocols which transfer each EMail message separately, and do not delete the message from the central mail server until receipt of a confirmation that the message is safely stored on your own hard disk.  If message transfer is interrupted by a computer crash or communications problem, the message will be downloaded again the next time a download is requested.  This makes it almost impossible to lose mail.  The free version of Juno provides an EMail address and 10 hours of  Internet Access.  You can pay for more service or fewer ads.

If you use Juno, or a similar service, at home, and are happy with it, and if you only travel occasionally, there is probably no reason to change.  When traveling, simply use a calling card to call your usual Juno local number, as described above for local ISP's. 

PocketMail:   described below

Web-based EMail:  This is not an ISP, but rather a service which allows you to get your mail while traveling, using someone else's ISP (which usually means using someone else's computer).  Yahoo, Juno, and several other similar services, provide a free personal EMail address.  Some of these services allow you to have mail forwarded from your own ISP's mail server (if you have an ISP, and if it provides this forwarding capability).  After you have set up the forwarding, and/or have given your Yahoo address to your correspondents, you then use an Internet Browser (such as Netscape) to access  the Yahoo website, reading your mail in a browser window.  This allows you to read your mail for free, wherever you can find a computer to use - public libraries, cybercafes (not free), friend's homes, Kinko's and other office services stores (not free), etc. This is an excellent solution for those who don't want to carry a laptop computer with them when they travel.  This service is funded by advertising revenues, so you will be bombarded with ads while reading your mail.

Your employer's ISP:  Many people do not have their own ISP, but do all their personal EMail and Internet browsing at their desk at work. Some employers have provided dial-in capability so that an employee's home computer can be connected to the mail servers and the Internet at work.  Whether this dial-in capability can be used while traveling  depends on the security provisions installed by the employer.  Some business systems will only accept calls from specific pre-defined phone numbers, which may have been programmed to accept your home number, but not random calls from elsewhere.   Many business systems have "firewalls" - special software and hardware which restricts communications between the company's internal computers and the external Internet.  Some businesses may have an 800 number which connects traveling employees to the central computer.   They may or may not allow personal use.

The details vary widely, so if you want to dial in to your employer's computer for personal or business use while traveling, you will need to have a long conversation with your system administrator at work.  Most people find this to be impractical, and eventually sign up for a personal account with a commercial ISP. 

University accounts:  People who have some affiliation with a University (staff, student, faculty, alumni, adjunct faculty, visiting Scientist, or even more informal connections) can often obtain a free Internet and EMail account from the University, or from one of its academic departments.  The dial-up capability willl generally only have a few local numbers serving the immediate campus area.  But in conjunction with the very inexpensive pre-paid calling cards, this can be a very practical and inexpensive way to access the Internet when traveling (or from home). 

First, learn to do it at home:  Learning a new system should be done leisurely, in surroundings where you can concentrate on the task at hand. In what follows, I assume that you have established one of the above methods for accessing your EMail and/or browsing the Internet, and that you have used it enough "at home" to be comfortable with the procedures.  You don't want to be learning how to use your computer or your new EMail software or your new ISP's procedures while standing at a strange phone on a street corner or in a campground office.  Do this learning at home.  

For those who are already full-time travelers, "at home" means in comfortable surroundings, with a telephone that is available to you for an unlimited period of time.  This could mean a phone hookup at your campsite (available in a great many campgrounds if you stay for a month or more, and at a few hundred RV Parks with instant-hookup phone lines at some or all of their sites).  It could mean an extended stay near a friend or relative's home, where you can monopolize their phone for an hour or more a day during a learning period.  It could mean a campground which provides a shared but unrestricted phone line for computer hookups, if the phone hookup is located at a comfortable desk in a quiet corner. (This is increasingly common - no longer hard to find, at least in some parts of the country).  I don't recommend that your first learning experience with a new ISP or new computer be done with a cell phone.  The cellphone connection is an extra layer of complication, is still somewhat tricky, and should not be attempted until everything works smoothly with a traditional hard-wired phone.

Doing it on the road:  Now that everything works well "at home", the only remaining issue is finding a phone while traveling, and assessing the economy of the various kinds of phone hookups while traveling.   There are many possibilities, and most people will want to be flexible so as to be able to use whichever connection method is most conveneniently available at the time.   The possibilities are:

Plugging in to a standard hard-wired phone:  This is by far the best method, when available.  It offers reliability and high speed, being many times faster than other methods that are commonly available on the road. {Note added 20 Oct, 2006: Some cell phone systems now offer higher data rates than hard-wired phones, even in many rural areas. For downloading large amounts of EMail, the overall performance of a cell phone is generally less than a hard-wired line due to very long latency (the total transmission time to and from the EMail server). Satellite Internet is also increasingly popular and is much faster (and much more expensive) than phone lines}. 

RV parks and campgrounds increasingly advertise a modem plug as one of their services.  If no modem plug is available in the campground, I'll list other places to look.  The more expensive commercial RV Parks are the most likely to offer convenient modem hookups.  We were recently at an (expensive) RV Park which had five separate modem hookups available, scattered conveniently through the park.  At the opposite extreme,  inexpensive campgrounds such as offered by NFS (National Forest Service), BLM (Bureau of Land Management), state recreation areas, etc, are unlikely to offer a modem hookup  (although most at least have a pay phone, which is useable with an acoustic coupler and your laptop, or with PocketMail www.pocketmail.com/ .

Instant-on phone at campsite:  By far the most convenient parks are those that offer instant-on phone connections at some or all of their campsites. The Trailer Life Campground Directory notes parks which offer this, or other, internet hookup capabilties. These parks usually charge a small fee when you initially check in (typically $.50 per call or $1.00 per day), and turn the phone on within a few minutes of your arrival. Generally, you must supply your own telephone if you want to make voice calls.   Some RV Parks will loan or rent a phone instrument. 

Monthly phone at site:  Many additional parks are wired by the telephone company for phone access at each site, but require that you telephone the phone company and ask to have phone service enabled.  This is similar to requesting phone service when you move into a new house or apartment.  In a few regions, the phone is turned on almost immediately when you call. In other regions, it may take days (or even weeks).  Generally, you must pay for a full month of service. You may also have to pay a substantial installation fee (typically $30).  Many full-timers stop traveling in the winter, spending two months or more at one place.  It makes sense to do this at a park where you can have a phone in your RV.  You will need to supply your own telephone, and you may also need to purchase an adapter, since some of these phone connections use a Hubbell connector instead of a standard RV-11 plug.

Central modem plug in campground:  A much larger number of campgrounds and RV Parks offer modem plugs at a central location in the park.  The current versions of both Trailer Life and Woodall's campground directories indicate if a park has modem hookups, and specify whether these hookups are at the individual sites or at a central location. Convenience of the central hookup varies - some have several private, comfortable, desks, while at others you'll stand in the office using their one-and-only office phone line. 

Since these phone lines are shared with other campers, and perhaps with other office uses in the campground, it is very important that you arrive at the phone line with your computer booted up and your EMail software already running, so that all you have to do is plug in the phone line and click the "retrieve my mail" button in your mail software.  And mail you want to send must, of course, be already in the queue ready to go, having been composed back at the RV.  This way, you can be done with the whole process and be walking out the door within about 3 minutes of arriving.  There is nothing quite so irritating as standing in a line of several other computer users, waiting while some other user ties up the only phone while he tediously boots his machine and starts his software. 

The best parks have one or more modem plugs (and a power plug) at a comfortable desk in a quiet room.  Each of these modem plugs generally is connected to a dedicated phone line which is not shared with other uses.  In such places, the only limit to the length of time you can remain on-line is the length of the waiting line of other computer-toting RVers.  In some parks, these modem plugs are in a location which is accessible 24 hours a day, and you can arrive late at night or early in the morning with the expectation of being able to stay on line for an hour or more without interruption.  This is important when you need to download a big software update or upload a bunch of photographs to your website, for example.  You are limited to local calls and 800 numbers on such phones.

Other parks allow the use of one of their office phone lines - typically the line that is used for the fax machine or the credit card reader.  In such places, you will probably stand at the front desk in the office while you hook up, and you will be asked to come in at a time when the office isn't busy, and to restrict your call to five minutes.  This is sufficient time to send and retrieve your mail and check your bank balance or stock prices, and maybe even upload a few small files to your web page  - but don't plan on web surfing.  You'll be limited to local calls and 800 numbers.

An increasing number of campground payphones have modem plugs. The procedure for using these plugs varies somewhat, depending on the type of phone and the whims of the phone company.  For local calls, you'll probably have to take the handset off the hook, verify that a dial tone is present, insert coins, tell your computer to dial the number, wait for the computer connection to be established, then hand up the handset.    Local calls may be cut off after 15 minutes.  Calling an 800 number may not require the coins and may not require lifting the handset at all.  For some payphones,  other steps are required - and with a little luck, these procedures will be posted at the phone.  One type of phone requires that you plug your computer modem into the modem plug, lift the handset, then manually dial the number using the keypad on the phone, wait until the computer at the other end answers, then hit the # key twice to enable the modem plug, wait till your computer makes the connection, then hang up the handset.  In this case, you need to click the "manual or operator-assisted dialing" option in the dialer properties in your own computer. 

As a last resort, you can ask to borrow the phone of a campground host or long-term resident in the RV Park.  Explain to them that you are using a local or 800 number, and that you don't even have to go inside their rig:  Just unplug their phone at the phone box (on a post in the campsite) and plug in the cord from your modem.   Dont forget to plug their phone back in when you leave!)

Other places to find modem plugs:

Truck stops:   Major truckstops  (increasingly called "travel plazas", and also catering to RVers) such as Flying J  often offer telephones for the convenience of truckers.  Generally, the phones have modem plugs, or can be unplugged from the wall, so that your modem can be plugged in.  Often, the phones are on some or all of the tables in the restaurant, so for the price of a cup of coffee you spend as long as you like on-line.

Kinko's: This national chain is primarily in the business of copying, duplicating, and finishing documents. They also rent computers by the hour - perhaps an alternative to cybercafes.  But my main interest in Kinko's is that most of these stores are open 24 hours a day, and each has several free telephones, generally located on a reasonably private little desk in a quiet corner of the store.  A sign requests that calls be limited to five minutes. But if I go there during a period when the store isn't busy, and if at at least one other phone remains unused, I don't hesitate to stay on-line for a longer period, and so far, no one in the store has complained.   There is one problem:  Kinkos are gradually converting all their stores to digital phones. Conventional modems won't work on digital lines.   An acoustic coupler   or a handset interface can solve this problem in most cases.  See http://www.konexx.com/mobile.htm for several very useful products for this purpose.

Mail Boxes Etc. (and various other similar stores):  Most such stores will allow you to plug your computer into their fax line.  There will be a modest charge (typically $2.00 for 15 minutes or perhaps $5.00 per hour). 

Hotel Lobbies:  Some hotels have modem plugs, or standard desk phones which can be unplugged from an RJ11 wall plug, for the convenience of guests.   I've used these several times and have never been asked if I was actually staying at the hotel.  Note that these may be digital phones, particularly in larger hotels.   Be prepared to use an acoustic coupler or handset interface.   Some larger or more expensive hotels have a small computer room for guests - with a PC, printer, fax machine, etc.  You can be fairly sure that any phone line that is used for a fax machine will also work with your modem.  The computers may not be on-line.

Airports:  Many airports provide pay phones with modem plugs.  These phones usually look quite different than standard pay phones, and may have built-in credit card readers instead of coin slots.

Visitors's Centers, Tourist Bureaus, Chamber of Commerce:  In smaller towns which are tourist-oriented, these offices are usually very friendly and cooperative. On several occasions, I have walked into such places, explained that I was staying in a nearby public campground and needed to hook up my laptop to a phone to retrieve EMail.  In each case, I was offered the use of an empty office and a phone.

Small computer stores:  On two occasions, I've walked into neighborhood store-front computer sales and service stores and asked if I could rent a phone line for a few minutes to get my EMail.  Each time, I've been offered the use of a phone without charge.  I tried to pay something they refused to accept anything.

Friends and Relatives:. It's easy to forget that our non-traveling friends and relatives all have telephones which they will let us use.   Never visit someone who lives in a house without your laptop bag over your shoulder.

Neighbors at RV Parks:  Many RV Parks have a mixture of long-term residents and short-term visitors like us.  The longer-term occupants may have phone service in their RV.  Get acquainted with them. Ask if you can pay them a few bucks to use their phone for a few minutes a day.   Explain that you can use their phone without invading the privacy of their RV, simply by plugging your phone extension cord into the modular plug on the utility post outside their rig. 

Campground Hosts:  Sometimes the campground host will have a telephone and will let you plug in for a few minutes (again, do it outside their rig).

Acoustic Couplers:  An acoustic coupler is a device for connecting a computer modem to the handset of a conventional telephone without any wires.  It has a microphone which listens to the noises from the earpiece, and a loudspeaker which makes noises into the handset microphone.

The PocketMail product is the most familiar version.  It is an acoustic coupler combined with a tiny computer, whose only purpose is to send and receive EMail.  It works very well for its purpose and is very easy to use.  But it does have several limitations:

There are at least two other acoustic coupler products which connect directly to a laptop computer modem, enabling your laptop computer to to your ISP in any of the following situations:

We have a Konnex Koupler,  http://www.konexx.com/koupler.htm.  A similar product is the Road Warrior Telecopuler II.  (Note added Mar. 20, 2003:  It appears that Road Warrior may be out of business and that this product may no longer be available - making the Konnex product the only choice.)

These devices are advertised to connect at up to 24,000 bps. Our experience is not that good. On outdoor payphones, which usually have antique carbon-granule microphones, the typical speed is 2400 bps, occasionally a little more. On modern phones, we've gotten up to 14,400 bps. Some ISP's will not accept a connection slower than 9600 baud.  If you have such an ISP, this device will rarely work with payphones (and 2400 bps is diegustingly slow anyway - particularly if we have to download several days worth of Fulltimer and RV-Talk digests.

But I've found a couple situations where the acoustic coupler is very useful: The campground I was in while writing the initial draft of this document has an indoor pay phone - a small desk model with a credit card reader but no coin slot. The acoustic coupler works fine with this phone - I connected several times at speeds from 9600 to 14,400 bps.

Another situation is when you run into a digital phone (usually part of a PBX (private branch exchange). These are often found in hotels and larger businesses, but they are getting cheaper and smaller, and I even found one in a rather small motel. These digital phones usually have extra features and buttons - a clue that they might be digital - and may have a non-standard plug. But even if they do have an RJ11 plug, they won't work with your modem. In fact, they will destroy some older modems as soon as you plug in. (Newer modems have protection built in and won't be hurt - but they still won't work. Protection devices for older modems are available from IBM or Road Warrior). An acoustic coupler will work fine with this kind of phone. Again, it will be slower than a direct wired connection, but 14,400 is a typical speed and is quite useable. A nice solution for using digital phones with your modem is available here.

With remote rural pay phones, there is sometimes a better alternative than the acoustic coupler.  Such phones often have an accessible junction box, where the phone is connected to the phone line.  Sometimes it's even a modular box (standard RJ-11 connector), where I can unplug the phone and plug in my modem.  On older boxes, it may have only screw terminals where alligator clips are necessary to couple from the modem to the phone line.  This gives the full achievable speed of the phone line and your modem - although these remote phones, on the end of very long wires, can occasionally be as slow as 9600 bits/sec.  This works best with an 800 number, where no coins need be deposited. 

Strictly speaking,  it's probably illegal to make this direct connection - do it at your own risk.  As a practical matter, I'm not cheating anybody out of anything and don't feel bad about it.   (Don't do this with the third-party pay phones which are installed by individuals or companies who rent the phone line from the local telephone company, control their own billing (perhaps with a computer built-in to the phone), and may not allow free 800 calls. These phones look different, and carry the name of the vendor rather than the name of the phone company.  In most areas, they are quite rare and quite expensive to use.)

A question from a person  who had troubles with an acoustic coupler: "How do you know when the distant modem "hits the line" ready to receive your signal?  How do you get your modem to hit the line at the same time?  "

This is indeed awkward.  Here are some suggestions:

This is all a nuisance.  But after I've been deprived of my EMail fix for a week, I'm desperate enough to do it.

Modular Telephone handset couplers:  This is a family of products marketed by Konnex.  One of these gadgets can be used when a telephone is available but does not have a modular wall plug, or is a digital phone.  The product plugs into the handset between the handset and the base of the phone (most office and residential phones have a modular cord between the handset and phone base, although the plugs are slightly different (smaller) than the standard RJ-11 telephone wall plug.  An acoustic coupler could be used in most such situations, but this product is much more convenient, and is faster. Although Konnex sells directly from their website, you can probably find much lower prices by searching the Web (Note added Mar. 20, 2003:  A similar product called the "Modem Doubler" was previously manufactured by Road Warrior - who is apparently out of business.)

A Beginners Guide to the Windows 95/98 Dial-up Networking application:   Some of the ISP's provide software which hides the details of the Dial-Up Networking application from you.  But as soon as you want to do somthing slightly out of the ordinary, you'll need to understand a bit about this application.  If you have a bare-bones local ISP which supplies no special software,  you may have already had to learn something about Dial-Up Networking, just to get started.

Double click on the "My Computer" icon on your desktop.  Within the window that opens, double click "Dial-up Networking".  If you already are using an ISP and installed the software provided by that ISP, you will see an icon with the name of that ISP.  Double click this icon.  It will open into the familiar "Connect To" window, with boxes for your User Name and Password, the phone number you will be calling, and a box called "Dialing From".  There is also a little check box labeled Save Password and three buttons labeled "Connect", "Cancel" and "Dial Properties".  If your system is set up like most, your user name and password and a phone number are already filled in, and the Save Password box is checked.  You can change any of these boxes (as for example to put in a new phone number when you are traveling.  But the change isn't permanent.  If you put a new phone number here and click "connect", it will dial the new number.  But the next time you open this icon, you'll find the same old familiar number, not the new one you just entered.  This is convenient if, for example, you are traveling briefly and want to enter your ISP's local number for the town you're currently in, and will probably never use that number again.  Just type in the  local number and click "Connect".  To change the number in a more permanent way, keep reading.

Changing Dial-Up Neworking settings:  Open the "Dial-Up Networking" icon (i.e. double-click it).  Right-button-click on the connection icon you wish to change and select "Properties".  

Use Multiple Dial-Up Icons:   I keep several separate Dial-Up icons on my desktop.  (You might prefer to keep this elsewhere) if you don't like a cluttered desktop).  One will be set up with the local number for my ISP whenever one is available and when I'll remain in the same area for more than a day or two.   Another is set up with the  800 number for my ISP.  The third is set up to use my acoustic coupler with a payphone.  (This is set for "manually or operator assisted dialing", since automatic dialing by the computer doesn't work on many pay phones.)  Another icon is set up to use a calling card, for those occasions when neither an 800 number or a local number is available for my ISP.  Go here for details on how to set up your Dial-Up system to use a calling card (prepaid cards are generally the cheapest way to call your ISP if a local number isn't available).

Creating new Dial-Up icons:  Double-click the My Computer icon on your desk top.  In the window that opens, double-click "Dial-Up Networking", then double-click "Make new Connection".  In the window that opens, type in a name for this connection (this is the name that will appear under the icon on your desktop - choose anything you like).  the "Select a modem" box will already be filled in correctly if you've only installed on modem.  If a pull-down menu is offered, make sure you select the modem you are actually intending to use. (You may find that there is still an entry here for that old modem you threw away two years ago).  Under the  "Select a modem" box is a "Configure" button. If you click this button, you'll see all the details about how your modem operates.  Leave them alone, unless you know what you are doing.   The default settings are usually ok, and these settings are probably the same as for any existing dial-up icons which use the same modem (and which presumably work correctly).  You'll need a reference book or advice from an expert in order to change any of these settings.   If things don't seem to be working correctly, compare each setting to those in a dial-up icon for the same ISP which is known to be working correctly.  The is one setting which you may need to change:  Click "Configure".  At the top of the new window are three tabs.  Click the one labeled "Options".  You'll see a check box labeled "manual or operator assisted dialing".  If you are using an acoustic coupler which requires you to manually dial the phone number using the key pad on the telephone, you'll need to check this box.

Top       RV Info Menu       Home