All of this talk of terminal servers has made me question whether my "homemade" solution can be applied to an epods.
I have a defacto wireless "terminal server" hookup between my PC, downstairs, and my television, upstairs. I use my TV to fully access my PC downstairs, without having any computer gear at all upstairs besides a keyboard, and without any wiring at all between the two rooms.
For data input, I keep a standard wireless infrared keyboard upstairs, transmitting via a commonplace 900 mhz IR repeater (i.e. X10 or Recoton) to the IR receiver port connected to my computer downstairs. To get the computer's audio/video signal to my upstairs TV, I use an X10 wireless 2.4 ghz video sender, hooked to the TV and audio out jacks on my video card, transmitting wirelessly to the audio/video inputs on my TV. This allows me to sit on my sofa upstairs and wirelessly operate my computer as though I were in front of it, without needing any computer gear upstairs or any network hookup at all. Basically a terminal server hookup that is platform independent. It's particularly nice for web surfing (within the resolution limits of a TV). I've been trying to think of how to apply this concept to my epods, for instances when my wife has commandeered the TV to use it for - gasp!- watching television!
I think I have an idea.
Apparantly you can establish an infrared (IRDA) connection between the epods and a pc. And I recently read, in another forum, that you can also use this connection for internet browsing. It said that if you install a basic freeware proxy server on your "host" PC, you can log on to the internet on your pc, connect your handheld computer to the pc wirelessly via the IR port, and browse the internet wirelessly from the handheld computer. (Would this work with an epods? The site was referring to handhelds in general, not epods specifically.)
So why not use this connection in conjunction with an IR repeater, just like the one I use for my wireless keyboard connection (above), to allow the use of the wireless connection room-to-room? The only difference I see is that you'd need two IR repeater kits, so you could put an IR sender and a receiver in each room, since the IRDA communication is two-way, as opposed to the IR keyboard's one-way signal.
Doing this, wouldn't it then be possible to connect to the internet wirelessly from the epods, using IR and a proxy server, without needing a wireless LAN setup (or any physical LAN connection at all)? As well as perhaps access other files on the "host" PC? Anybody tried this, or know why it wouldn't work? Any comments at all?
