Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!rutgers!uwm.edu!psuvax1!astph!joe
From: joe@astph.UUCP (Joe Broniszewski)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.misc
Subject: Re: SLIP: Why are people so reluctant to use it?
Message-ID: <52@astph.UUCP>
Date: 17 Oct 90 13:42:06 GMT
References: <1990Oct16.225610.3505@oracle.com>
Distribution: na
Organization: Philadelphia Phillies
Lines: 27

In article <1990Oct16.225610.3505@oracle.com>, tslee@oracle.uucp (Terry Lee) writes:
> 
> So in summary, is SLIP all that bad?  Are there other relatively standard
> methods of running TCP without sizable investments in hardware?


We used slip for a while between unix machines in conjunction with an
intelligent multi port serial board.  I used a 38.4K line and got a 
throughput of 27.9K.  It worked well.  We could have multiple telnet
sessions, file transfer, and remote printing.  I thought that it would be
a low cost ethernet substitution, but the support for it was not there.  
ISC is our unix vendor and they have no plans to support nfs on slip.  They
claimed that it was very error prone and not a good networking solution.  I
never got around to getting it to work with a modem.  The main problem that
I saw with our direct connection was the inability to network more than 2
machines together (multi serial line slip is not a option for me - ISC).
Over all, my experience with slip was very positive, however limited.
My feeling is that many networking programmers, etc. look at slip as
an inferior solution.  Unfortunately, there is not a lot of money to be made
for slip research, so it goes by the way side.  

I have heard that there are a few other standards for running tcp over serial
lines coming out soon.  

-- 
  Joe  Broniszewski   ||      Philadelphia      ||         (814) 234-8592x4
  astph!joe@psuvax1   ||        Phillies        ||         psuvax1!astph!joe