David Franklin inquired about the difference between SLIP and PPP.  I put
the question to the System Administrator at Shasta County Office of
Education in Redding California.  Here's his response.
 
>Subject: Re: Walking around in our SLIPs
>
>>Jim:  Can you offer any enlightenment on this inquiry?
>>
>>Rich
>
>Sure,  there are two ways to get a "network dial-in" connection using a
>plain ol' phone line.  The first is using a communications protocol called
>Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP).  It makes your modem think it is a low
>speed network card.  Using this protocol you can run applications like
>Mosaic and Gopher on your computer to access the internet directly without
>the need of a host standing in the middle.
>
>Point to Point protocol (PPP) does the same basic action as (SLIP) with some
>enhancements.  The first is that PPP is a recognized standard by the ISOC
>(Internet Standards Organization Committee).  The second is that PPP allows
>reverse address resolution protocol (RARP) meaning that each caller does not
>need to be assigned a specific IP number i.e. 198.34.123.34.  Rather a pool
>of IP numbers can be assigned to a bank of modems and each time a caller
>connects they are assigned an IP number from the pool.  This makes
>management easier but means little to the user.
>
>As to whether one is faster than the other or inherrently "better" is a
>matter of debate.  Both protocols allow computers to access the internet as
>a full network node rather than calling a host i.e. Compuserve.  We use PPP
>as our protocol mainly to conserve IP numbers.  We only need to reserve 20
>IP numbers for our 20 modems rather than 95 IP numbers for our 95 callers.
>
>
>Jim
 
 
 
Rich Jones                              Governing Board For:
Development Director                    Carter House Natural Science Museum
Shasta Natural Science Association      Redding Arboretum By The River
[log in to unmask]              SNSA Environmental Resources Center