Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!usc!apple!bbn!news From: news@bbn.COM (News system owner ID) Newsgroups: comp.org.usenix Subject: Re: USENIX Board Studies UUCP Message-ID: <48623@bbn.COM> Date: 21 Nov 89 22:07:18 GMT References: <287@usenix.UUCP> <1989Nov19.032449.7940@world.std.com> <2167@prune.bbn.com> <16645@nuchat.UUCP> <7071@ficc.uu.net> Reply-To: pplacewa@antares.bbn.com (Paul W Placeway) Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA Lines: 35 peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: < In article <16645@nuchat.UUCP> steve@nuchat.UUCP (Steve Nuchia) writes: < > This seesm to me to be the obvious way to go. < < As someone else mentioned to me, "You're making sense, that's the problem". < A dial-up SLIP-type protocol is just too logical (hopefully with packet- < level CRC and header compression). This would be a Good Way to do things, as long as you have an _eight_ bit clear channel to speak through. "Now let's see... I want to go out through my MNP-5 modem, which is locked at high speed, but my Unix box is too stupid to understand hardware flow control, so I have to use XON/XOFF (darn). I'll be talking to their MNP-5 dial in modem, which is hooked up to a Micom port selector, which is in turn hooked to an Annex PAD, talking only telnet to their system, which doesn't understand the 8-bit option to telnet (darn, a 7-bit channel), and there's that stupid telnet escape character, not to mention the modem escape sequence. But I still want to exchange news with them..." (No, this isn't an invented scenerio -- it describes comming from the outside world to one of many machines on the Ohio State U. main campus. I know -- I wired up that Annex) The problem is that if you go SLIP (or PPP) only, you will discover the same problem all those ZMODEM users have -- I can't get from here to there (ZMODEM copes with XON/XOFF fine, but can't deal well with random escape characters or 7-bit channels). Perhaps we should start with an extension of PPP that can degrade down to 6 1/2 bit clean, very short packets, if needed, but is more efficient on a wider channel. -- Paul Placeway