louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) (05/28/91)
I wanted SLIP for my NeXTstation at home. I was disappointed that NeXT didn't want to provide a SLIP implementation, either as a supported part of the system software, or as unsupported code as other vendors do. After buying the machine and a 660MB disk, I didn't even want to consider one of the commercial products, which seem to be over-priced. So I wrote my own. More accurately, I ported the CSNET/CREN DialUpIP 2.0 code that was released by CSNET a while ago. It actually seems to work just fine. Here's the grand plan. Once this package has completed some additional testing [more on that in a moment], I'll drop it off at the various archive sites for folks to grab. For free. To help pay for my computer, disk and future toys, I'm thinking of selling future versions with VJ TCP header compression and perhaps PPP for a reasonable price. For instance, I'm thinking around $75.00 for a version with TCP header compression. Perhaps more for the PPP version, depending upon the effort required. For free you get essentially the plain vanilla DialUpIP SLIP code. Extra goodies will cost a few dollars. I probably will NOT be releasing the source code as I've spent quite a few nights hacking on this, and it represents some value to me. Now, for the beta testing part of this. I'm looking for a few beta testers who already know what SLIP is, have already used SLIP and know something about networking. Idealy, the beta tester should have some experience with the CSNET/CREN DialUpIP code. It would be real nice if I could get a cross section of different SLIP servers (i.e., Xylogics terminal servers, cisco terminal server, KA9Q, etc). The goal of the testing process is to check out the code to make sure that it works. A non-goal is to test the ease of installation by those ignorant of networking in general and SLIP in particular. In other words, if you need hand-holding, spend a few hundred dollars and get the commercially supported version. If you'd like to participate, send me an EMAIL message explaining briefly what prior SLIP experience you've had, what equipment you'd be testing it with (modems, SLIP servers, etc), and how much testing you'd be able to do (e.g., few hours each day). You must have a reliable Internet accessalbe mailbox and idealy direct FTP access. Don't bother posting a response asking to be a beta-tester, or heaven forbid, calling me on the phone. I expect that the testing period will begin in a week or two and last two or three weeks, if everything goes well. Most everything seems to be working right now, except for the dialmon program which seems to be having some sort of curses related problem. After the testing is complete, I'll drop the working code off at the archive sites and the rest of you can have at it. In the mean time, if you want to know just what the NeXT version will do and how it works, etc, you can just grab the CSNET/CREN DialUpIP code from the FTP sites (I think that UUNET.UU.NET has a copy), and look at the documentation. The NeXT version is *very* similar except for how the kernel driver is installed. All of the documentation in that package will be released as part of the the NeXT version in man page form as well as Digital-Librarian friendly RTF files, along with installation and release notes. louie