Connecting my PS3 to the Internet using a dial up modem?

yes it can be done and will work fine if your internet connection is good enough. It will work the same as if the internet connection goes right into the PS3.

Search around a bit and you will get the info you need for your setup, this is normally referred to as Network Address Translation (NAT), although I *think* in some places you will see it being described as internet connection sharing. This process is the same for any type of computer..so you won't need to focus your search on PS3 specific ways.

I would only recommend going down this route if you are quite familiar with computers/networking or know someone who is........as with anything about networks, if you run in to problems it can be tough to find out whats going wrong.

In short what you want to do is:

0) Plug an ethernet cable between them
1) give your laptop NIC a static IP
2) give your PS3 NIC a static IP (not the same as laptop of course)
3) Configure the connection sharing -> you'll need to turn on NAT/connection sharing - google how to do this for whatever OS is on your PC. Its probably just a single option.
4) In the NAT options, you need to define the ports the PS3 uses for incoming connections (about 2-4 numbers). I forget what they are off the top of my head but can get them later for you if you're stuck.

Once it is done once, it will work for good.

As I said, if you know someone who knows their networks get them to do it - they will be able to do it in 5 mins for ya.

Let us know how you get on,

P

what kind of speed do you get on your modem with o2? (say how fast can you download anything using your pc?)

If your not getting over 20k/sec it will take a long time to do anything on the ps3 online. The demos are always around 1000Mb+ and the updates are 130M i think. Even online play will often need good speeds.

Ah Ok, 100kb/sec is plenty.

The next most important thing is lag. It is the time it takes for your o2 modem to send information. Some games will definitely work ok for you, others might be a bit glitchy. Online games work best with non-phone shop broadband solutions but you should be ok for quite a few games anyway.