🚀 go-pugleaf

A couple of relevant data points.  I connect to a local Internet/USEnet
provider here in Vienna (I'm logged in now to NZ from Austria to post this,
because the new software on the Viennese machine broke when they installed a
replacement for nntp/cnews (inn2?).

The local people recommend that if you want a news feed, you should still
connect via UUCP to pull the batches down -- it's much more efficient than
SL/IP over a dial-up link.

Net and industry magazine scuttlebutt suggests that SL/IP is still faster
than PPP.

The problem with connecting to mail using dial-up IP has been fixed by using
a modified IDA sendmail that establishes a daemon for each site, which
monitors the syslog for when a connection occurs.  It then wakes up and
proceeds to transfer the mail (assuming the remote end can handle a sendmail
connection over IP.)

In general, there doesn't seem to be a good solution for receiving mail from
sendmail from MS-DOS with SL/IP (or other dial-up IP.)

If you're planning to read news, but not keep a local archive, and you can
afford to stay on-line a long time, then use NNTP with a capable news
reader.  Obviously, FTP and remote telnet still seem to be the best options
for working over dial-up IP, as well as some XPC stuff -- e.g. DesqView/X
with FTP Software's PC/TCP makes a nice combination, although a dedicated
NCD X terminal with the NCD proprietary protocol is much better for running
Motif over a low speed link.
-- 
Paul Gillingwater, paul@actrix.gen.nz