1) Are there firewall settings turned on on your machine or Teresa's that might be interfering? Also, is the cable modem connection on her machine temporarily disabled?

2) Is the NIC on Teresa's machine set to receive an IP address from yours instead of using a static address? (This would be some variant of an "Enable DHCP" option in her TCP/IP settings.) If the machine is set for DHCP, does it, indeed, receive an IP address? If not, that's the first thing to troubleshoot -- cable connectivity and so on.

3) If Teresa's machine does receive an IP address from yours, can she ping the static IP address of your network card? (Your machine, at this point, should have one static address for it's ethernet card and one variable IP address from the dialup modem.) If no, troubleshoot that.

4) If Teresa's machine can successfully ping the static NIC in your machine; make sure that that same IP address is set up to be the TCP/IP gateway on her machine. If the gateway is set up and can be pinged, but no Internet addresses respond (for instance, www.yahoo.com), can she ping or connect to a URL by its IP address, instead? (For instance, www.yahoo.com is 66.94.230.34.)

Assuming that the problem is not a firewall setting on your machine or hers:

If her machine responds to an Internet address by IP, then the problem may be the DNS server

If her machine won't respond to an Internet address by name or IP, but it will ping and connect to your static IP, then the problem is something to do with the IP translation (viz NAT, IP Masquerading, etc.) on your machine. This would be some problem in the Mac "Share Internet Connection settings" to probe.

If there's anything equivalent to "binding order" make sure that the TCP/IP connection between Teresa's machine and yours is set to be the primary connection on her machine. On your machine, my instinct is that the dialup connection should be primary -- and the cable modem connection should be disabled on both.

Otherwise, Jordin or Erik will probably be along in a little while

Thanks, Lenny, for the implied compliment, but I am only marginally clueful about these things. ("The definition of a computer guru is 'someone who knows one more trick than you do.'")

If the machines can see each other in network view, it's not a hardware (cable) problem. (as a double check, you can turn on file sharing on one machine and make sure they can trade files).

The one thing I can suggest is that when I've had no luck with a dialup connection, it's sometimes because I failed to enter a valid DNS server IP address in the TCP/IP tab of the Network system preferences. Doesn't seem to matter for other types of connection. Patrick, do both machines have the correct DNS server entered? If so, I'm out of clues...

If the cable modem was being the DHCP server (which it normally is, I believe), there may now be a problem in that there's no DHCP server in the network, so some or all systems may not be getting an IP address (or may be using some unexpected default).

Note the past tense, because in fact, thanks to the husband of Digital Medievalist, the problem is solved. And indeed one of Lenny's suggestions was correct--I had the iBook's firewall turned on. Duh.

As I said to Mr. Digitalmedievalist, "One generally prefers the answer to be one's own dumb mistake. Those kinds of problems are easy to fix."

One way of checking to see if DNS is the problem is to ping a numeric IP address from the "non-dialup" computer.

Other thing to check is what the "non-dialup" computer has set up for the IP address to use as a gateway.

The "dialup" computer should have two IP addresses; one given by the dialup connection, one on the internal network consisting of your ethernet crossover cable. The IP address that it has on the internal network should be what the other computer has set for a gateway.

1 - On the iBook, look at System Preferences/Sharing/Internet. 'Share your connection from' should be the internal modem. 'To computers using' should only have Built-In Ethernet checked.

2 - On the iBook, System Preferences/Network/Network Port Configurations should have only the internal modem and the built-in ethernet checked. On the G3's, only the built-in ethernet should be checked.

3 - On the G3's, System Preferences/Network/Built-In Ethernet, click on the TCP/IP tab. Make sure all the fields are blank (the one option here is to try the 'Search Domains' field as either blank or with your dial-up service providers base url - AOL users, for instance, might put aol.com here).

4 - Press the Apply Now button on the lower right corner of TCP/IP preference pane now.

5 - On the G3's, System Preferences/Network/Network status will now show connection status and IP address. If this shows no connection, now would be the time to shut all the machines down, then bring up the iBook and its dial-up connection, then power up the G3's and see if you get a connection.

6 - If all else fails, fix yourself a big drinky-drink and call Cory Doctorow or Joey DeVilla for their m4d netwerking skillz.

Good Luck

Apologies, if this is obvious and you've already been there.

However, practically the moment our home networking problems were solved, our hosting service evidently had a five- or ten-minute downtime. Jeez. What next. No, don't answer that.

Remember, we are dealing with "Nixon, the Sequel" (or "Son of Nixon" for my age group).