[11273] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
LRNG572; SLIP/PPP is EASY?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brad Cox @ GMU/PSOL)
Mon Mar 28 05:55:22 1994
Date: Sun, 27 Mar 1994 09:13:01 -0500
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: bcox@gmu.edu (Brad Cox @ GMU/PSOL)
Cc: bcox@gmu.edu (LRNG572 Spring94; GMU Televised Class; "Taming the Electronic Frontier)
Miles R Fidelman <fidelman@civicnet.org> wrote
>Now.... if I received a disk with all my Internet software on it, and a
>step-by-step instruction sheet, 5 or 10 minutes on the phone would
>suffice to get a suite of Eudora, Fetch, Mosaic, TurboGopher, and NCSA
>Telnet up and running -- and this could probably be automated with an
>installer program.
>
>Note: I am, of course talking about the Mac environment. If you're
>running Windows, things would probably be a lot harder.
Miles, I suspect you'll be correct in the future, but you're certainly
wrong right now.
This spring I negotiated a deal with digex for my televised "Taming the
Electronic Frontier" class. This experiment failed, but due to breakdowns
on the supplier side, not the user side. Apparently configuring SLIP
accounts is harder than I ever imagined. I never managed to get a single
student account past the SLIP login prompt so I ultimately gave up trying.
The telephone tag for even this trivial breakdown (wrong passwords) proved
too excruciating, even though I do thank Doug Humpheries for trying to
respond to my business proposal (give me 50 15-week SLIP accounts without
charge and I'll give you 50 SLIP addicts paying monthly fees thereafter).
If anyone out there would like to take me up on this offer, minus the
telephone tag and nonworking accounts, for this fall's course, let me know.
But the main reason for aborting this attempt was that the client-side
software isn't ready for prime time, certaininly not on the Mac and I
suspect also for PCs. Its bad enough that the software is fragmented, not
available on a single disk as you advise, but scattered between Engst's
book and a dozen or so download directories all around the net.
MacTCP/Interslip is not easy software to install and configure,
particularly with the random assortment of modems you'll encounter in any
diverse group, even one as homogeneous as the graduate students in my MA in
Telecom course.
But the truly fatal problem for newbies is that something in the chain
tends to crash machines, even once the configuration is perfect, but
especially when trying to get it running. Far worse, the particular crash I
still occasionally encounter (triggered by problems as minor as the remote
end timing out on line inactivity and hanging up) invariably nails the hard
drive just about every time it happens.
This isn't a big problem if you have a disk repair utlility handy, as I do.
But I can think of nothing more fatal to an already insecure newbie than a
damaged disk and no clue of how to acquire disk repair software, nor money
to buy it.
Last and not least, I've even found that I'm using my commercial SLIP
account less and less and generally use ordinary old dialup Eudora. This is
just because 99% of my internet use is for email, and the other 1% for
which SLIP is most useful just doesn't occur all that often.
If I had my druthers, I'd far prefer that further improvement be in the
direction of simplifying the dialup eudora configuration process and
adopting a less flakey POP protocol that is tolerent of non-error
correcting modems.
Brad
PS: Apologize for the repetitious enclosure; am copying this to my class.
>Date: Fri, 25 Mar 1994 17:26:07 -0500 (EST)
>From: Miles R Fidelman <fidelman@civicnet.org>
>To: com-priv@psi.com
>Subject: Re: Options (was Re: What is an "Internet reseller"?)
>
>On Thu, 24 Mar 1994, Bruce Gingery wrote:
>
>> Maybe the trade-off for increased usability (at least at this point) is
>> ease in setup. SLIP and PPP setups can be moderately difficult to
>> darn-near-impossible for the network neophyte. Logins are little
>> different from a local BBS, or even the workstation on the desk.
>
>I'm not so sure it is so much more difficult, based on the following
>observations:
>
>i. I helped set up someone's copy of Microphone to autologin to a public
>access Unix machine -- this was a nontrivial exercise, and once they were
>logged in teaching them to use something as simple as Pine was
>excrutiatingly painful
>
>ii. I just set myself up with PPP access to a local SLIP/PPP vendor -
>other than having to know which files to download, the step by step setup
>was pretty simple and other than a nameserver problem at their end
>[they're a new vendor and still wringing out their bugs], everything was
>trouble free
>
>iii. the simplest setups I've seen are AOL and 1stClass BBSs, which are
>simply insert the disk, then point and shoot
>
>Now.... if I received a disk with all my Internet software on it, and a
>step-by-step instruction sheet, 5 or 10 minutes on the phone would
>suffice to get a suite of Eudora, Fetch, Mosaic, TurboGopher, and NCSA
>Telnet up and running -- and this could probably be automated with an
>installer program.
>
>Note: I am, of course talking about the Mac environment. If you're
>running Windows, things would probably be a lot harder.
>
>Miles
>
>**************************************************************************
>Miles R. Fidelman mfidelman@civicnet.org
>Executive Director 91 Baldwin St. Charlestown MA 02129
>The Center for Civic Networking 617-241-9205 fax: 617-241-5064
>
>Check out our gopher server:
>CCN - The Center for Civic Networking
>on the list of all gopher servers in the world.
>
>Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century
>Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere
>Then We Can Worry About: "Switched, Interactive, Broadband Services"
>**************************************************************************
>
--
Brad Cox; bcox@gmu.edu; 703 968 8229 Voice 703 968 8798 Fax
George Mason Program on Social and Organizational Learning
