Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!csn!boulder!daemon From: William "Chops" Westfield Newsgroups: comp.dcom.sys.cisco Subject: Re: SLIP Connecting Networks Message-ID: <34989@boulder.Colorado.EDU> Date: 12 May 91 11:33:06 GMT Sender: daemon@boulder.Colorado.EDU Lines: 37 [cisco doesnt support gateway style slip] Which is a real shame. The Encore/Xylogics Annex has had this capability for a long time. I had my (admittedly tiny) home ethernet on the other end of a Annex SLIP line with full reachability for about two years before I upgraded from SLIP to a faster net interface. I'd really like to extend the same courtesy to others, but my STS-10X can't hack it, for what appear to me to be purely marketing reasons. In retrospect, I am inclined to agree. It's not exactly marketing's fault though. Being the first TS vendor to implement SLIP, we (I) had to make a design decision. cisco had a slightly different view of the world than Encore, having for one very larger terminal servers (96 lines) and also having a router product line. This meant that we had to do a sort of all-or-nothing implementation of routing, if we wanted to do SLIP routing. This was before SUNs were affordable home computers, and before telebit came along and revolutionized the modem marketplace. PC ethernet cards were at least $500. We (I) figured that SLIP would primarilly be used as a cheap way to connect PCs to networks. I found the thought of a 96 port router and the associated number of routing updates and so on a troubling thought, and we (I) decided not to support routing over the SLIP links. We figured people who really wanted to connect to networks together woud spring for routers and the (then) more efficient synchronous serial interface. Now, the market has shown us (and me) to have been insufficiently foresighted. Unfortunately, the old implementation now has momentum, sort of, and continues. If you are somewhat patient, you may see interesting changes in this area, but I don't think the STS10 has enough oomph to be a real router in todays networks... Bill Westfield cisco Systems. -------