Re: SLIP/PPP question (NOT the usual)

["Scott Alfter" <salfter@theonramp.net>]

Dave Althoff <dalloff@freenet.columbus.oh.us> wrote in article
<5gvpem$4i6@login.freenet.columbus.oh.us>...
> Recently, I was looking at the description of exactly what SLIP is.  SLIP
> is nothing at all, but a means for packaging data.
> 
> I have also looked at descriptions of the SMTP and NNTP protocols.  Like
> SLIP, there is very little to them...just commands and data packet
> descriptions.

What you describe isn't all that farfetched.  I've logged into NNTP, SMTP,
POP3, and IRC servers before and done stuff manually (even chatted by
talking directly to the IRC server, but that's kinda painful unless you
have split-screen chat.  All that would be needed would be to take this a
couple of steps further: (1) automate the server connection and (2) fake
some kind of SL/IP or PPP (but this might not even be necessary; see
below).

With some ISPs, you wouldn't even really need to deal with SL/IP or PPP. 
Even if you don't have access to a shell account, some of the terminal
servers used by various ISPs will let you telnet from the terminal server
to anywhere on the Internet.  If you can do that (I know that the Ascend
terminal servers used by TheOnRamp do this, for example), putting together
software to talk to various servers (SMTP, POP3, NNTP, IRC) would be
trivial (could probably be done with ProTERM scripts and UltraMacros, a la
GEnie Master).  FTP and HTTP would be a bit trickier, but they'd still be
doable.  I might even give such a setup a crack myself, more for fun than
anything else (most of my comm work these days is done on a Cx5x86-120
under Win95 and Linux).

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(IIGS(  Scott Alfter (salfter@theonramp.net)
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