Dial Up Internet With No WiFi or Power - OSX 10.6.8 Snow Leopard

If you find yourself in a power outage emergency or a rural area with no cable or Wi-Fi internet service, it is possible to still connect to the internet to use e-mail, contact people or get emergency information. Many ISPs provide a local telephone number to dial up internet service via the standard RJ-11 telephone landline. For example, Earthlink allows 20 hours per month dial-up time for high speed customers per a list of local access numbers available throughout the USA.

What you will need in no-power and no-WiFi situations:

1) A laptop computer with charged battery.

2) A live telephone line (the old-fashioned RJ-11 kind) - listen for a dial tone on phone, then unplug the cable from the phone input.

3) A built-in 56k modem (or an external USB modem dongle such as Apple USB 56k Modem MA034Z/A - check eBay - under $10)

What you need to do:

1) Plug the live phone line into your laptop modem port (RJ-11) - it is slightly smaller than the ethernet cable/port.

2) Open Network Preferences. Configure the modem network on your laptop to dial up the local access number, with your username and password for your ISP account.

3) After connecting to the internet, try setting your web browser to run as lean as possible by turning off unnecessary preferences (such as images, movie plug-ins, etc).

What you will need with power available but no WiFi and no laptop modem:

1) A laptop computer capable of WIFI reception.

2) A WiFi router with built-in 56k modem port (such as AirPort Extreme Base Station A1034- check eBay - under $15)

What you need to do:

1) Insert an active telephone cable into the AEBS modem Port

2) Open the Airport Utility application (Finder Menu > Go > Utilities > AirPort Utility

3) Select the Base Station and configure with your local access number and ISP username and password.

4) Select Modem tab - uncheck Automatically Dial.

5) Update Base Station. After it recycles, try dialing up the internet by clicking on 'Connect' under the WIFI icon.

6) If everything works, try setting your web browser to run as lean as possible by turning off unnecessary preferences (such as images, movie plug-ins, etc). The dial-up modem is only 56k per sec compared to 5-10mb per sec on high speed. But it does work in a pinch or an emergency.