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From: gnu@toad.com (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: TCP/IP over ISDN Basic Rate
Message-ID: <telecom-v09i0469m02@vector.dallas.tx.us>
Date: 22 Oct 89 23:41:12 GMT
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X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 469, message 2 of 11

I am interested in hooking up SPARCstations over ISDN.  The machine
comes standard with an ISDN terminal interface chip (the "sound" chip,
really an ISDN speakerphone chip).  The problem is data encoding; I
have seen no documentation of standard ways to encode data passing on
the 8000 byte/sec channel for IP.  I have seen references to ways of
encoding e.g. 9600 baud async "RS232" traffic over ISDN, but I will be
talking ISDN-to-ISDN, so can use the full bandwidth.  Rumor has it
that somebody had standardized bit-oriented protocols (HDLC) over ISDN
links, which is ridiculous since they are byte oriented links, sort of
like storing data in main memory with bit stuffing just in case you
ever need to do clock recovery on main memory.  My preference would
just be something like "PPP".

Can anyone on Telecom provide details on upper level ISDN
standardization efforts?  All I have found was low level protocols;
once you get to the 8000 bps byte stream, it's left up to the user to
define.  (I could go ahead and do this, but I can't get Sun to support
it since they want to go with standards even if they are brain dead
standards.  They say Suns talking to Suns is not interesting.  I say
getting ANY two pieces of data equipment talking over ISDN would be a
miracle at this point.)

Please reply by email since I usually don't have time to read Telecom.

[Moderator's Note: But please cc: telecom so all of us can share.  PT]