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From: sl@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: ISC 2.2 and SLIP have some pretty major problems!
Message-ID: <173@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca>
Date: 10 Nov 90 05:42:51 GMT
References: <1990Nov09.064033.8282@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Organization: USENET Public Access, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 39

In article <1990Nov09.064033.8282@ddsw1.MCS.COM> karl@nis.naitc.COM (Karl Denninger) writes:
>In article <1990Nov09.011135.18395@ddsw1.MCS.COM> kdenning@nis.naitc.com (Karl Denninger) writes:
>>
>>We are having a hell of a time getting this to work.
>>

>Does anyone have good (or even bad :-) suggestions?  I really don't want to
>dedicate modem(s) and phone lines to this; if I didn't care then I'd just do 
>it the easy way and get a PC-based router and perform the connection that
>way.  As it is I can't do that.

If the only reason you don't want a pc-router is that you don't want to have
to double up your phone lines; and you have a few spare serial lines on your
host; how about simply hooking your pc-router up to them. Have a special
"shell" program that once a slip user log's in, simply connect's the two
ports (the one he is dialed into and a free port to the pc-router) together.
A simple C program to do that shouldn't take long to write.

We have been using SCO Xenix TCP/IP and SLIP for about a year and a half. And 
just recently converted to pc-routers to do SLIP. The subjective analysis is 
that I will NEVER EVER attempt that again. Our site is MUCH happier now. 

Tonight we see if the latest ka9q with ppp and compressed headers helps
improve connectivey. I wonder how long it will be before I could get that from 
any of the major 386 Unix vendors :-)

I would stronly suggest that you use PC-Routers, either do-it-yourself with
ka9q or off the shelf. Even if you have to have some awful hack (such as
described above) to hook it up. You will reduce your headaches tremendously.
The current crop of SLIP drivers on 386 unix platforms is old, buggy,
unreliable, etc. It also tends to exacerbate problems in the TCP/IP
implementations (the implementors usually didn't envision connections with
10-15 second response times, often timing out in 1 second or less, etc).



-- 
Stuart Lynne	Unifax Communications Inc.
		...!van-bc!sl 604-937-7532(voice)     	sl@wimsey.bc.ca