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From: emv@OX.COM (Edward Vielmetti)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: call for discussion of usenet newsgroup 'comp.protocols.ppp'.
Message-ID: <m0jTmqd-000FZPC@poe.aa.ox.com>
Date: 19 Apr 91 04:13:26 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: emv@msen.com
Organization: The Internet
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[This will be familiar to you if you have read news.groups or comp.dcom.lans
recently.  I am not posting it from news because the gateway eats my 
address.]

I am gathering opinions and interest for a new Usenet newsgroup,
to be called 'comp.protocols.ppp'.  It will discuss the Internet
"Point to Point Protocol", implementations, protocol details, 
interoperability reports, software, hardware, etc.

Currently there is a fair amount of discussion of PPP on Usenet; though
it's scattered around in a number of groups, I was able to count on the
order of 50+ relevant articles in a span of two weeks.  Unfortunatly
these articles were in more than a dozen different groups, and there's no
single one group where the discussion would ordinarily gravitate.

This group would cover the following subject:
	- the Point to Point Protocol
	- IETF efforts at standardizing and extending the protocol
	- free and commercial software implementations
	- interoperability reports
	- other protocols occupying similar ecological niches, including
	  SLIP, compressed SLIP, and various HDLC things (but not 
	  other async protocols like Kermit or xmodem)
	- hardware details of async and sync communications, whenever
	  that ends up being relevant.

The usual Usenet ritual involves a "request for discussion", a period
of time for hair-tearing and gnashing of teeth to determine whether the
name is suitable, and then a "call for votes".  The discussion thus
far has centered on whether the name is too narrow and shouldn't be
widened to encompass SLIP; I suspect that the actual discussion in
a "ppp" group will include slip discussion for a while if only because
of the installed base.

Comments can go to me or to the list; discussion regarding the name
is traditionally the playpen of news.groups.  Substantive discussion
of PPP would be best done in the two existing usenet groups that get
most of the traffic (comp.dcom.lans and comp.dcom.modems) or on the
IETF PPP mailing list (mail to ietf-ppp-request@ucdavis.edu to join).

-- 
 Msen	Edward Vielmetti
/|---	moderator, comp.archives
	emv@msen.com

"With all of the attention and publicity focused on gigabit networks,
not much notice has been given to small and largely unfunded research
efforts which are studying innovative approaches for dealing with
technical issues within the constraints of economic science."  
							RFC 1216