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Grex Internet Item 68: Slip access through Grex with Unix software?
Entered by raven on Mon Aug 22 23:10:05 UTC 1994:

        Has anybody heard about this?  Would it work on Grex for individual
accounts?

This week's top story concerns a new program called The Internet
   Adapter, a $25 Unix program that turns an Internet Unix shell
   account into a SLIP account.
ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/issues/1994/TidBITS#239_15-Aug-94.etx

I found this on USENET as an extract from a longer e-newsletter called tidbits.

15 responses total.

#1 of 15 by raven on Mon Aug 22 23:39:49 1994:

        I ftped the document it sounds too good to be true.  This would allow
people to run Mosaic, Eudora etc from their Grex accounts [though at 2400
it would be very slow]. Check out the review at the ftp site given in #0
        For more info direct from the company:
        
         For more information, send email to <tia-info@marketplace.com>
  or connect to <marketplace.com> over the Web or via Telnet, Gopher,
  or FTP.
  
http://marketplace.com/
telnet://marketplace.com
gopher://marketplace.com/ 
ftp://marketplace.com/tia/
  
  Once your order has been filled, with your Unix account, you
  retrieve the proper version of TIA via FTP, Gopher, or the Web,   
  and then launch it on your Unix account. (You can get an 
  evaluation version and test it for a few weeks - details are in  
  <tia-info@marketplace.com>.) Needless to say, in normal usage, you
  would script your SLIP program to log in to your shell account and
  then run TIA to start up the SLIP emulation, but it's possible to
  do it manually as well, I imagine.
  .

#2 of 15 by scg on Mon Aug 22 23:44:24 1994:

I think I've read in other discussions of Grex offering PPP and SLIP
connections that our contract with ICNet doesn't allow us to do that.

#3 of 15 by twist on Wed Aug 24 05:42:25 1994:

what does our contract with ICNet allow us to do? and how do we do it?

#4 of 15 by curby on Wed Aug 24 15:59:52 1994:

I think that all that ICnet is giving us is a pipe to pass information
back and forth, right?  The only stipulation being that we cannot become a
"reseller",  which is what the slip and ppp connections are viewed as.

Am I wrong board members?

This has to do with limiting compettion for ICnet.  He wants to be the
person that provides the slip and ppp access thru his link to the
Internet.  He does not want someone else to make the money off of it.

#5 of 15 by bartlett on Sat Jan 7 17:54:25 1995:

Tia works exactly in the fashion described, that is it turns a normal
shell account into a slip link over which you can run the TCPIP
applications.  I don't know about Ic.net, but MSEN is allowing shell
acount users to run tia, but they are not offering any technical support,
help or in any way offering to make it easier.  

I doubt that Ic.net could actually restrict the use of tia on Grex, but at
the same time, a 2400bod slip session would be pretty hard to use.

#6 of 15 by srw on Sun Jan 8 20:01:13 1995:

I am surprised MSen would allow tia to be run, since they charge $ for 
providing SLIP over and above the cost of a shell account.

#7 of 15 by apollo on Sun Jan 8 23:59:29 1995:

From what I've heard, a 2400 baud slip session would be *cripplingly* slow...

#8 of 15 by bartlett on Mon Jan 9 05:18:12 1995:

Re: 6.  They only allow it because they figure (rightly so far) that Tia
is hard enough to configure, and few enough people know about it that they
have more to lose by alienating those users than by closing the hole. 
Rest assured if 200 new users start using their shell accounts with "TIA,
Msen will likely put a nenix on it right quick.

     Chris, who's guessing, but it's an informed guess.

#9 of 15 by mju on Mon Jan 9 20:40:25 1995:

As long as MSEN gives you access to a C compiler as part of your
shell account, there isn't much they can do to prevent you from
running TIA.

#10 of 15 by cel on Mon Jan 9 20:49:30 1995:

if TIA uses outbound IP, wouldn't that limit its usefulness to
grex members only?

#11 of 15 by bartlett on Wed Jan 11 05:35:55 1995:

Hmmm, I was told that one could do some sort of process monitoring and
kill any TIA process if one wanted to badly enough.

#12 of 15 by curby on Wed Jan 11 06:49:42 1995:

If you named it something else, it would be harder to trace.  If you
added in a DES encryption to the data flowing across the socket, it
would be harder to trace.

But how hard would it be to add socket monitoring to a machine?  I think
that the GREX kernel already has something like that in place, no?  If you
set the machine up to only allow people if a certain group access to creating
sockets, it would be fairly simple to stop people from using the program.

#13 of 15 by srw on Thu Jan 12 04:17:53 1995:

Indeed you could not use such a program on Grex unless you were a member.
If you were, though, you could use it, although our agreement with IC net
says that we will not redistribute IP services.

#14 of 15 by scg on Thu Jan 12 05:46:51 1995:

What happens to Grex if somebody uses it and violates our agreement with
ICNet?  What obligation does Grex have to intervene?

#15 of 15 by mju on Thu Jan 12 06:35:10 1995:

Grex is not allowed to supply direct SLIP or PPP connections.  I'm
not sure how TIA falls into that.  If we really want to know, our
ICNet liason (John Remmers) could send mail to Ivars.

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