Re: Remove plip(4)?

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

[thorpej]
>> Would anyone mind terribly if I removed plip(4) (like slip, but over
>> the PC parallel port)?  The only kernel config references to it are
>> in acorn32, and theyâ??re commented out.

Does it actually _work_?  If not, I'd say it it should be deleted (or
fixed, but it sounds as though it's unlikely anyone cares enough).

[T]
> I personally rather see SLIP removed than PLIP, since most users are
> probably going to use PPP, if using a serial port.

Mayyybe.  Years ago (2002), I had occasion to network two machines and
the only common media they had was serial.  I spent hours fighting with
PPP and never did get it working reliably; I *think* I got it to the
point where I could often make it work by rebooting things in just the
right order, but it was always brittle.

SLIP, on the other hand, Just Worked, first time, every time.  Its only
failing for that use case was that it didn't support IPv6, so I fixed
that - I'm not sure whether that ever made it into the tree or not.
(See ftp.rodents-montreal.org:/mouse/misc/ipv6-slip if you're curious;
I can provide patches, but only for now-rather-old NetBSD.)  Since then
I've always used SLIP for impromptu serial connections and it's always
worked painlessly.

Mind you, PPP has always Just Worked for me as a client to an
ISP-provided server.  Depending on the user base you're postulating,
that may or may not matter more.

I would say PPP works much better as a client of an established server;
SLIP works much better for one-off setups, the sort of thing where
manual configuration of each end is no big deal and it's not clear
which end would make more sense as the server and which the client.

> There's not another option for the parallel port IIRC.

Does that matter if nobody uses it?

Actually, hm, I should check whether it's in the versions I use; I
don't often need to network machines without Ethernet, but it happens
occasionally, and PLIP might be faster than SLIP....

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