Steven Grunza <steven_grunza@ieee.org> writes:

> Has anyone had any luck using NetBSD with AOL

Last I knew, AOL did not use PPP for its dialups. It used its own
proprietary protocol which originally spoke to the AOL servers only,
and was later retrofitted to also speak IP. It all worked by using the
dialup server as a simple terminal server, which relayed all bytes
from the caller through a raw tcp session to an "AOL server" elsewhere
on the network, which then decapped the IP packets and forwarded them
on.

I heard at one time that they were going to switch to using PPP, but
that was at least a year before the AOL 5.0 CDs started showing up in
the post, and AOL 5.0 still uses the "AOL Dialup Adapter" (ie
proprietary protocol) rather than the Microsoft "Dialup Adapter"
(PPP).

(BTW, the nature of the connection (in particular, the tcp tunnel),
made for terrible performance - typical ping rtt's were 500ms and
above with a 56k modem).

> or any of the free ISP such as bluelight.com or netzero.net?