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Date:      Tue, 28 Mar 1995 09:43:55 -0500 (EST)
From:      "Alex R.N. Wetmore" <aw2t+@andrew.cmu.edu>
To:        freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com (freefall.cdrom.com)
Subject:   Re: Plug-n-Play Internet acccess (was Re: httpd as part of the
Message-ID:  <YjS22fO00iUyE1Ul5k@andrew.cmu.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.3.91.950328202127.3062Y-100000@aries.ibms.sinica.edu.tw>
References:  <Pine.BSI.3.91.950328202127.3062Y-100000@aries.ibms.sinica.edu.tw>

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Excerpts from internet.computing.freebsd-hackers: 28-Mar-95 Re:
Plug-n-Play Internet ac.. by Brian Tao@gate.sinica.ed 
> *  SLIP/PPP over dialup:  The user should be able to run a
>    configuration utility (using either dialog or lynx as the front
>    end) that asks them for the ISP's name, phone number, connection
>    rate, host IP address, gateway IP and nameserver IP.  It would be
>    great if we could somehow have an autolearn script that watches how
>    a user initiates a session, but this might be infeasible.  With
>    this minimal set of information, the user should be able to connect
>    their FreeBSD box and do simple things like ping, telnet or ftp to
>    some other host on the Internet.  Both static and dynamic IP
>    addresses should be supported.

I think Windows NT handles this very gracefully.  For those who haven't
seen it, basically you fill out a dialog box with the above information
(actually, I think there might be two dialog boxes, one for the modem
information (speed, etc) and one for the ISP information).  Once you've
filled this in you can use slip by clicking on a "Dial" button, which 
will call the ISP and put you into a terminal window.  The bottom of the
terminal window has a "I'm connected" button and a place to enter your
IP address (if you're on a SLIP connection).  While buttons are out for
a *BSD text mode interface, it wouldn't be bad to have it dump them into
TIP (or another terminal program) and tell them how to get out when they're
connected.

An official way to do slip connects is probably needed too.  Saying "use
kermit, then suspend it and slattach and ifconfig and route" just isn't
a great solution.  I had a set of kermit/shell scripts that would connect
me via SLIP, but I'm not sure what happened to them, since I've been using
PPP ever since I discovered how great pppd/chat are to setup and use.

alex




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