Re: Remove plip(4)?

[T <bobs%thelibertytree.org@localhost>]

On Mon, 3 Oct 2022 22:43:21 -0400 (EDT), Mouse wrote:
> 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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On my retro machine, I haven't had the best of luck with the networking 
interfaces, the integrated one doesn't work properly with the NetBSD 
driver for it, and the additional ISA NIC seems to have stopped working 
after upgrading to NetBSD 9.x so falling back to PPP-over-serial was the 
best option, at the time, for networking connectivity. It worked fine 
when I tried it. SLIP wasn't compiled by default into the kernel, so that 
provided incentive for using PPP. The parallel ports on my computers, 
that have them, are never used so PLIP struck an interest in me since it 
could potentially be faster, as you mentioned, and it would not occupy 
any serial ports which I use for console access to other machines.

I found a Laplink cable at a secondhand store for next to nothing so I 
can report back if it actually works.