Configuring the Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP)

Use SLIP when an Ethernet or Token-Ring network connection between the local host and another location is not possible but a serial line connection is. SLIP can be used to connect the local host to another host via a single, physical serial line connection between serial ports or over longer distances using telephone lines and modems. A computer that is running SLIP over one or more serial lines and that is also connected to a computer network (such as an Ethernet) can serve as a communication gateway between computers on the network and the computers at the far ends of the serial lines.

This chapter describes:

• Configuring SLIP with the Network Configuration Manager. This section assumes you are familiar with SLIP concepts.

• SLIP concepts. Read this section if you are unfamiliar with serial communications in general and SLIP in particular.

• Troubleshooting SLIP.

• Other sources of SLIP information.

Also available for serial line communication, for use instead of SLIP, is PPP. See ``Configuring the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)'', for more information on PPP, and ``Serial line communications'' for a comparison of the two protocols.

SCO SLIP supports only asynchronous communications. SCO provides SLIP as a part of the discrete PPP package within the SCO TCP/IP runtime system. To use SLIP, you must either install the entire TCP/IP runtime system or ensure that PPP is one of the packages selectively installed.

Terminology used in this chapter:

line

as in serial line -- the physical medium over which data flows

link

as in SLIP link -- the virtual connection between two machines over which data flows

interface

as in SLIP interface -- the abstract entity to which the IP driver routes datagrams