Multiple simultaneous dial-out PPP   

I need assistance configuring RRAS to achieve a particular goal.  In concept 
it is simlar to the "Branch Office" scenario I see mentioned in the RRAS help 
quite a lot in that I need to establish on-demand, outbound (from the Windows 
server) PPP connections to remote sites.

However, unlike the easily configurable standard branch office scenario 
which looks like this:

Intranet -- Windows Router -- Modem ---- Modem -- Windows Router -- Intranet

What I need looks like this:

Intranet -- Windows Router -- (Bank of N modems)  ---- Remote PPP Devices 
w/Modems

where there could be hundreds of remote PPP devices that I want to connect 
to on demand.

The key points:
- There are many remote sites, possibly hundreds.  However, connections to a 
given site are required only occasionally and are of short duration.
- I need a bank of modems on the local side (around 8 to 16.)  I cannot 
dedicate a server-side modem to each remote site.  When a demand connection 
to a given remote site must be made, I would like to be able to pick a free 
modem, dial the specific remote site, and make the PPP connection.

So my questions are:
1) Can this be done using RRAS?  If so, how do I go about configuring it?
2) If RRAS cannot do this automatically (i.e. dial-on-demand), can I 
programatically cause an outbound PPP connection to be established using any 
Windows-provided API?
3) Or do I need to use a dedicated piece of network infrastructure (e.g. a 
Cisco router) to accomplish this?

date: Fri, 26 May 2006 12:04:02 -0700   author:   cguy1