Re: Connecting to Ethernet

[toh@freenet.Victoria.BC.CA (Marc Sira)]

In our last episode, dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson) said:

>The type of cable isn't conclusive - 10Base-T cables have enough wires
>to run a serial connection, though it would be rather confusing to use
>the same wiring for two physically incompatible connections.

Actually, this is fairly commonly done in installations where you want
a dumb terminal today for legacy reasons, but believe you'll want 10 or
100BaseT ethernet tomorrow. We do it here (at a public library), and I
use cat-5 UTP with my PB Duo (and an RJ-45 adaptor) to connect to the
console ports of network equipment (so that I also have a network cable
if I need one). It does seem to have confused the original poster though. :)

>If there are some serially connected Macs, then they might be able to
>run AppleTalk encapsulated in TCP/IP over SLIP or PPP (I'm not sure if
>this is possible), or TCP/IP encapsulated in AppleTalk over a simulated
>LocalTalk connection (RS-422 point-to-point connection to some kind of
>terminal server).

There is a free package called ARNS which allows tunneling Appletalk
through, but it would be wiser and much less yucky to run AppleTalk straight
over PPP (there is an ATCP specification that's a peer to IPCP). The reverse
is also still done in some cases (MacIP), though it would be a bit ugly in
this case. You could do Phonenet over 10BaseT cables with a four-to-eight
conductor adaptor, I suppose.

All this would be nice to see on the GS (a PPP implementation with both
Appletalk and IP support, for dialups or direct serial connections :).

-- 
Marc Sira			   |
{ub675,toh}@freenet.victoria.bc.ca | "Your god drinks...p-p-peach nectar!"
{aa,xx}382@freenet.carleton.ca	   '