Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ucbvax!ucdavis!deneb.ucdavis.edu!ccruss From: rdhobby@ucdavis.edu (Russ Hobby) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: SLIP discussion at the Interoperability Conference Message-ID: <702@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> Date: 10 Dec 87 17:40:07 GMT Sender: uucp@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu Reply-To: rdhobby@ucdavis.edu (Russ Hobby) Organization: University of California, Davis Lines: 52 Here is what happened at the TCP/IP Interoperability Conference with regards to SLIP. The BOF session was too large to get any protocol standards work done, but the group provided input as to what needs to be covered by the the standard and some of the potential uses for SLIP connections. There seemed to be two types of usage for the new standard SLIP protocol. One is the connection of isolated computers that do not have access to a LAN. PCs would be a big proportion of the computers in this category, but certainly any type of computer can use the capability. The other use of SLIP connections is for temporary network links. The idea is to advertise a route to another location all the time, but to dialup and establish the connection to that location only when there is traffic. The first packet will be delayed while the connection is being made, but there after traffic would flow smoothly. After a certain period of no traffic the connection would be dropped, thus saving on communications costs. The evening after the BOF session, a smaller group of us got together and got some productive work done towards the writing of an RFC for a SLIP type protocol. Here is an overview of what was decided (at least what I can decipher from my notes). 1) The RFC will cover both connection and line protocols 2) Connection specifications will cover negotiation of items such as network addresses, authentication, line speed, compression used, and probably other items. 3) The line protocol will contain one byte in the header to indicate the protocol in the packet. This allows the use of line control packets for maintaining the serial link, as well as allowing other protocols in addition to IP and the line control to use the connection. Much more detail was discussed, but I don't want to bore you with it now. It was thought that an RFC draft could be done and an implementation to test it in a couple of months. UC Davis will be implementing the new standard by modifying our current work. So some of you may want to wait for the standard version rather than using what we have available now. But then if you have an immediate need, out old version will be there. Since the standard version will be more than experimental software, it will more complete and better documented. Russell Hobby Data Communications Manager U. C. Davis Computing Services BITNET: RDHOBBY@UCDAVIS Davis Ca 95616 UUCP: ...!ucbvax!ucdavis!rdhobby (916) 752-0236 INTERNET: rdhobby@ucdavis.edu