13. Design Project: Implementing SLIP

This chapter presents the design of a software package for UNIX SVR4 that enables IP datagrams to be transmitted over serial communication lines. Many of the facilities discussed in previous chapters are used here, including mounted streams, polling, nonblocking I/O, file descriptor passing, the Data Link Provider Interface (DLPI), STREAMS modules, and multiplexing.

13.1. Introduction to SLIP

SLIP, serial line IP, is a de facto standard protocol that defines how IP packets are framed to allow their transmission over point-to-point serial connections. SLIP provides a cost-effective way to gain access to the Internet, so it has become very popular. The SLIP protocol is defined in RFC 1055.

The protocol is ...

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