If you have a strong computer 'at home' but want to use a simple notebook for travel, I suggest employing your home computer to run the engine and the netbook to just run the front end (chessbase, arena, aquarium).

notes:
a) this works only if both machines have access to the internet.
b) I use Arena, instead of chessbase, because it runs better on my old Thinkpad T41.


How to connect this wimpy netbook to that zippy processor

Overview
ok - i'm in a hotel room in Bern. my notebook is using the hotel's wifi and is connecting to my home computer.
i open Arena (playwitharena.com) and click analyize. The motor starts up and *blink* *blink*, two seconds gone and it's at depth 17! "This is fast," i smile to myself, "I have to thank Jesse after tomorrow's win."


8 hard steps - in decending order of the probability one 'throws in the towel' [resigns]
1. call your ISP and ask for 'a dedicated ip address'

home computer:
needs a 'dedicated ip address', which is the computer equivelant of 'a permant mailing address'. it's the address our notebook will use
to find our home computer. call your ISP and ask for "a dedicated ip address".

2. login to your router from your home computer

google your router name and the phrase 'admin login', example dlink x4-234 admin login, or check your router's box to figure out the address. typically the address will be
192.168.0.1
192.168.1.1
reference page: http://portforward.com/

3. from your router's admin page, assign your home computer a 'static ip address' based on it's name, or the mac address of it's network adapter. this is the local network's equivalent of a permanent mailing address.

in a minuet we'll tell the router, "Look, if anyone comes knocking at the door asking about chess moves, send them straight to my desktop computer. I told them to use door 7788. Anyone one knocking on that door - send to me.

so, first we have to give our desktop a permanent address - so the router can know where to send people. otherwise, each time we turn our computer off and on, the router will give our computer a new address, invalidating the forward rules we'll be setting up.

a static ip address is the local-network equivalent of a dedicated ip address.
this address can probably be something like
192.168.0.100

check the portfowarding page for more info.

4. set up 'port forwarding'
reference page: http://portforward.com/

you need to tell the router to send (forward) all information which comes into your network on port number 7788 to your analyis computer.

note: assume our dedicated ip address is 1.1.1.1 - our notebook will be connecting to 1.1.1.1 on port 7788, which is sometimes written as 1.1.1.1:7780

5. add engineServer to your home computer and engineclient to your notebook.
http://home.arcor.de/bernhard.wallner/netChess.html

6. start engine server
you have to tell it where the .exe engine is and on which port to run (use 7788).

7. start engineclient on the notebook
this program will make an exe file named, net-yourenginename.exe. from chessbase/arena you will use add this exe as a UCI engine.

enter the dedicated ip address which you got from your ISP, port 7788, and a name for the engine. let's call it Engine. this will make a file named netEngine.exe

8. open Chessbase/Arena add the engine

thread at rybkaforum with some pictures
http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforum/topic_show.pl?tid=19248

reason for edit: text setting, formatting