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