Hi Eric;

My home PC is connected to an ADSL modem (ethernet connection) which is plugged into a phone line jack at home. The phone company did some special wiring on this line at the control box where the phone line comes in the house. So I must plug to this particular line.

Anyway, the ADSL modem is always on and has an IP address. I also have an ethernet card in the PC connected to the modem. This is the IP address I use to connect to SQL Server.

At work, I am on a network which is always connected to the Internet. When I created the ODBC connection, I typed in the IP address of my home network card for the server name. I also went into client configuration (from the ODBC page that selects the login authentication type) and selected TCP/IP and again typed in the IP address and the standard port number of 1433.

The next screen then allowed me to select the database (from the list coming from my home SQL Server).

That was it. When I did a test, it completed successfully and then in VFP I created a remote connection (using this ODBC DSN) and could then create remote views. The first connection is a bit slow, but by sharing connections subsequent opens of cursors is pretty fast and retrieval is mind-boggling, considering. For instance. I created a remote parameterized view of the Northwind customer table (on customerid). So the following commands;
v_customerid = "G%"
Requery()

returned all the customers with a starting g in the id field in perhaps a quarter of a second. With a browse window open, the requery refreshes the window and there is barely a noticeable time delay.

My ADSL is the cheap kind, 1.5 MB download and 512K upload. For more money per month, I could get 7 MB download and 2MB upload.

Anyway, I found it quite remarkably easy that I could connect to my remote home PC as if it was a server down the hall. I am running WIN95 at home so the PC is pretty unsecure (if you're interested in trying to connect sometime, I'll send you the IP address, but privately!) but the PC isn't on all the time.

What I think could be so hand is using SQL transfer manager to copy a database from a client site to the development machine without having to do a backup and then restore.



>>You can pay more and get static IP addresses (I have a dynamic one, but it hasn't changed yet. Maybe if I turn the modem off.) I have two PC at home networked (so one PC has two ethernet cards) and I am using software so both can access the net. This works well too.
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>Waht OS are you using on the machine hooked to the wire? I wasn't aware that NT could do IP forwarding to allow another networked machine. I am having trouble picturing how this works as far as IP assignment on the piggyback machine...