USENIX Board Studies UUCP

Bill Stewart 201-949-0705 ho95c.att.com!wcs wcs at cbnewsh.ATT.COM
Fri Dec 8 15:20:28 AEST 1989


]>Clearly, the Telebit 'g' spoof works well for us now.  Philosophically,
]>though, it bothers me that we have an OS as vendor-independent as UNIX,
]>yet we are so dependent on Telebit.  Ideally, other equipment should be

Actually, it's the opposite - the protocol Telebit modems use to
talk to each other interferes with vendor-independent protocols such
as uucp-g, kermit, xmodem, etc., by having long line-turn-around
delays and doing large-packet transmissions, both of which are much
different from the default case (even flow on full-duplex, which you
get either from real wire or conventional modems.)

Telebit has done a lot of work to create workarounds so we can use
normal software making normal assumptions, and still have their
boxes in the middle.  The reason we're all dependent on them is
because their boxes cost such a reasonable price that it's much
cheaper to pay $500-1000 (depending on when you bought it) than it
is to pay the additional phone bills for 1200-2400 baud.

-- 
# Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 4M312 Holmdel NJ 201-949-0705 api.att.com!wcs

#		We did it for the formlessness ...



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