Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP)

The need for a data link layer protocol to allow IP to operate over serial links was identified very early on in the development of TCP/IP. Engineers working on IP needed a way to send IP datagrams over serial links. To solve the problem, they created the very simple protocol SLIP to frame IP messages for transmission across the serial line.

Unlike most TCP/IP protocols, SLIP has never been defined as a formalized standard. It was created informally in the early 1980s, and it became the de facto standard before it was ever described in a Request for Comment (RFC). When it was published in 1988 (RFC 1055, "A Nonstandard for Transmission of IP Datagrams over Serial Lines: SLIP"), the decision was made to designate ...

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