Has anyone gotten KA9Q to work with SLFP or PPP on Merit at 9600+ baud?
Which dialup did you use?  763-6800?  or that 747 one?
I just got a 14.4 and would really like to get my FTP capabilities back...

63 responses total.

9600bps works fine if you use 747-3400.  Don't bother with 763-6800;
it's impossible to get an 8-bit transparent connection the way the
modems in that hunt group are configured.

Enjoy it while it lasts, though.  SLFP is going to be turned off
entirely, and SLIP is going to be restricted to destinations within
the Merit network, starting August 1.  PPP already restricts you
to destinations within the Merit network unless you authenticate
yourself with a valid authentication ID.

I use KA9Q (Dos and Linux versions) at 38,400 baud with 14.4 carrier, but
at the office, not via Merit, using SLIP.

Marc...  have you configured a PPP driver to work with Merit & KA9Q yet?
I have one I downloaded from HAL, but it doesn't want to work with the
PPP config that came with KA9Q...and all my fiddling with "attach" commands
hasn't helped.  (or the "ppp" cmds. either)

I had thought about using SLIP, but I didn't know if it was worth the trouble,
since PPP was going to become the norm...
(And incidentally I don't have access to a direct link)

Unfortunately, I've only gotten PPP to work at 2400 baud (due to
limitations in my modem, i.e. it's a 2400 baud modem).  I've heard
quite a few people at UM complaining about the 9600 dial in lines/
modems having major problems.  Perhaps it's not all in the configuring
of PPP?

Do you think you could mail me your PPP config or post it here?

I think I'd stand a better chance of mailing it all to you.  It looks
like you might be able to change a few parameters and get it to work at
a higher speed than 2400, but I've never tried that.

Thanks, Kent.  I'll see what I can do with it...

Anyone here still fiddling with PPP? I've just gotten MacPPP going
on a Powerbook, and established connections with Fetch and with
Versaterm Telnet. Fetch is very nice - but I haven't found an
application for the Telnet link, yet. I would be glad to learn what
new worlds I can now conquer :).

I would bother to learn about PPP if I could find a place to call
that would talk to me. You should be able to telnet to any system on
the internet and log in, if you have an account. Possible examples:
M-Net, Cleveland Freenet (or any other Freenet), umcc, etc.etc.
Even (one day) grex.

I've got PPP working on my IBM-clone via KA9Q, but at 2400 baud it's
kind of ridiculous for telnet sessions.  Ftp works okay, though, and
of course things like 'finger' and 'ping' are also fun to play with.
Someday, I'll get a faster modem and then I can try multiple sessions
via PPP (once I tried ftp'ing and telnetting and the same time at 2400
baud, and of course it slowed everything down to probably less than 
1000 baud for the two apps).

I use ka9q w/PPP at v.32/9600 a lot via Merit's new dialins.  It works
perfectly.  No problems whatsoever.  It's nice having all of those services 
available to me... I can do all sorts of cool things with it. :)

I'll bet.  (drool).

I'm using the new 9600 baud MichNet line too. Apparently I can Fetch
into my office Mac, if I leave it on, but haven't tried that yet. I
have been warned about leaving FTP enable on, because someone might
do a hack on me, but they'd have to have the IP address. Is this a
problem? I did try Telnet to hermes.merit.edu via MacPPP, but that was
much slower than the 19.2 Kbps line. I understand, however, that MacPPP
should be available on 19.2 in the new year. Brian! Please tell me about
"cool things" you can do with PPP (privately, if they are too cool ;->).
The problem with Telnet, of course, is having access to other hosts. I
don't know of any that I want to connect to, for other than ftp, and that
is widely available as anonymous ftp without PW.

Well I wish I could telnet. There are hosts I have accounts on that I'd
like to access. I can't use PPP through Merit, because they won't
let me.

The 2 most common Mac ftp server programs, NCSA Telnet 2.5 and FTPd,
offer security (in different ways).  The only risk might be of
someone intercepting your packets and stealing your password. 

I use my own comm program with MacTCP and my own TCP/Telnet Tool.

I use InterSLIP for the SLIP layer.

I have a copy of bhall's program, and it is excellent.
(Communicate Lite, from Mark/Space Software)

Because it uses the Mac's comm toolbox, I can use it to connect via
modem, lat or tcp/ip.  I can use it to telnet to unix machines on
the ethernet at my office.  I can't get to the internet there (no
connection) and I can't use it with SLIP or PPP because I have no
connection.

If I had access to a SLIP server, though, I'd be very interested in
InterSLIP.  I know next to nothing about it.

If you "know next to nothing about it", why are you "very interested
in InterSLIP". Voyerism? (Seriosly, though (if you can believe it), what
does SLIP do that something else doesn't? Some SLIP tools were included
in my Versaterm software, but *SLIP is not mentioned in the documentation*.)

I guess that last paragraph in #16 didn't come out right.  In case
you didn't know what I meant, I know enough about SLIP to know that
it is something I want to play with, and Interslip (with MacTCP)
will do the job, since I have Communicate Lite. That makes me
interested.

Now if I only had the knowledge of some of the details, like is it
Commercial, Shareware, or free? etc etc.

This is all academic unless I can find a SLIP server, anyway.

SLIP is more ancient and slower than PPP, which is a better replacement.
In between, there was C-SLIP, which compressed SLIP headers to lower the
overhead.

I use KA9Q with SLIP to communicate to work when I need to transfer stuff
(14.4 v.32bis, 38400 baud), but I don't use it for telnetting, because it
can't seem to emulate a VT100 or an ANSI terminal correctly.
 

OK. I will stick with PPP and Fetch, then. Such a cute doggy....

The emulation defects jdg mentioned are a limitation of the program
KA9Q and not a function of SLIP. I am sure that bhall (using his
own program) can get fine vt100 emulation and telnet over SLIP.

I always wondered what the advantage of PPP over SLIP was.

I thought PPP added header compression and authentication, compared
to SLIP.

I did feel a lot of pressure getting PPP running, but it does include
authentication.

  You can get KA9Q to do ANSI emulation fine: just get NANSI.SYS and
put it in your config.sys file, and it'll trap all that... I can u/l it
here, if there's interest...

Does KA9Q not like ANSI.SYS?  Or any other ANSI.SYS replacement?

  It has some problems with ANSI.SYS, although that should work for most
things.  I *KNOW* that it works well with Nansi, which is why I suggested it.
Other ANSI.SYS replacements should work ok as well, as long as they do
a reasonable job implementing the ANSI command set--which ANSI.SYS screws
up on, btw... (it has been know to go to 40-column mode on me, when I was
running it, before I got NANSI)...

Okay.  That makes sense.  (I use nansi.sys, anyway, for the reasons
you mention).

More progress: have now gotten Versaterm Telnet FTP running from this
Powerbook, and checked into my office computer and downloaded a WORD
document (successfully!). However VT FTP is *way* slower than Fetch
(at least in VT ver. 4.6.3), and I wouldn't recommend it. I asked above
about access protection on my office Mac when I leave it on - have
found out how to use Telpass, and now have ID/PW access protection there.
Now, I'm reading "The Whole Internet", to find out where I want to go
from here. This is all done, of course, via MacPPP.

Re My #14: I was mistaken in thinking that a PPP connection at Merit
was useless w/o authentication. I have no authentication, but 
anonymous PPP does let you access MichNet hosts.

I set up PPP and successfully used fetch to get Mac files from the
umich mac archives to my home mac. This is a very handy thing for
Mac owners in the area to know about, as the UofM Mac archive is
quite good. You still have to spring for MacTCP from Apple unless
you have it via a site license.  mac archive = 141.211.120.11
It's very limited in the day, use it at night.

re 26: Well, using NANSI from 5/93, and KA9Q from 6/92, telnetting still
(pardon the professional jargon here) sucks.

The closest I can come to getting things to work properly is to turn on
"SLOW" and ensure that the full NANSI is loaded:

    "nansi d"
    "ctty con"

Even so, when using "rn", it doesn't clear the bottom line (80x25 vs 80x24)
problems, and often overlays lines improperly (forgets to "erase eol") so 
that things are unreadable.  "vi" seems to work fine, though.

  Really?  I haven't had problems... you might check your version of NANSI
--I know that there are various versions, some closer to the ANSI standard
than others....

My KA9Q header says:

KA9Q NOS version 920603 (KA9Q)
Copyright 1992, by Phil Karn, KA9Q

My NNANSI header says:

NNANSI.SYS for Generic VGA (AT class processors)
by Tom Almy, version 5/93

Based on NANSI.SYS V2.2
c 1986, Danial Kegel

Hmmm.  Perhaps I really need NANSI and not NNANSI?

Nope.  I installed NANSI.SYS 3.3 (11/91) and things only got worse.
Sorry.  I just won't use KA9Q for telnet much, thanks.

As a last-ditch effort, you could try ZANSI.SYS, yet another ANSI.SYS
improvement.

When I was using KA9Q, NANSI (or maybe it was NNANSI) always worked
fine with it for me, so I don't know what the problem is.

It may be the 6/92 version of KA9Q, which seems to operate in ANSI-like
fashion, without an ANSI driver installed in MS-DOS.

(I discovered this today whilst fooling around with various ANSI drivers.)

You might also try BIOS video writes with KA9Q - I think I saw a switch for
that *somewhere*...

  If nothing else, I could try giving you MY version of NANSI, which I've
never had a problem with, though I guess I haven't beaten it THAT hard....

    Using NANSI
    Appears to be chancy.

Moving on from KA9Q and MacPPP...I have now implemented AppleTalk
Remote Access from my Powerbook at home to our Zone on the CAEN
network. Wowie! This provides access to my office Mac desktop, all
CAEN servers, and Public Folders on all the CAEN Macs. Connection is
at 14.4Kbps and as GUI as can be. I had previously implemented 
AppleTalk between this Powerbook and our SE, for file exchange and
printing, but this is an order-of-magnitude broader horizon. One
cannot, however, run applications remotely, because the link isn't
fast enough.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss