[2117] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Trickle Down? How About Buggle Up?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael P. Martineau)
Mon Jan 27 15:07:46 1992
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 92 15:29:10 AST
To: brian@lloyd.com
From: martinea@hawk.nstn.ns.ca (Michael P. Martineau)
Reply-To: martinea@hawk.nstn.ns.ca
Cc: jhaverty@us.oracle.com, com-priv@psi.com, craig@aland.bbn.com
It is clear that dial-up IP is an interesting subject. We are working
on a pilot project at BARRnet to provide good, reliable, dial-up PPP
service. We are going to try to solve the problems with mail so that
the necessity of having a permanent virtual link goes away.
NSTN is a regional network providing Nova Scotia, Canada with Internet
connectivity. We have been operating a dial-in service for about a year,
mainly aimed at PC users. We have supply a disk with various pieces of
freeware and some locally developed "glue" software. The user is presented
with a menu with a number of options, including "dialling into the network",
e-mail, news, Telnet and FTP. For e-mail and news we provide our customers
with, at no cost, POPmail and TRUMPET. A central machine provides mail box
and news services. Hence, customers need only be on-line when they wish to use
the network; mail is saved for them until they are ready to read it.
The principal reason for this approach is to educate our customers about
client/server applications so that when they hook up their LAN at some time
in the future, the basic paridigm for using Internet applications will not
change significantly.
The biggest challenge is setting up this connection option has been the tuning
of the freeware packages to operate over slow (2400bps to 9600bps) links. As
well, I was "forced" to rewrite the SLIP packet driver so that it presented
a class 1 interface; otherwise, we could not get TRUMPET to run.
*************************************************************************
* Michael P. Martineau martinea@hawk.nstn.ns.ca *
* General Manager Phone: 468-NSTN *
* NSTN Inc. FAXL 468-3679 *
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