By now most of you should know that an IP (Internet Protocol) account using SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) or PPP (Point to Point Protocol) is necessary to run the GUI (rhymes with groovy) applications that make the Internet nicer to look at and in some cases easier to use than command line UNIX. Netscape, for example (or Mosaic, for those of you living in 1993) requires IP access, as does the superb Anarchie and (except for those with true know-how) Eudora. With an IP account, one can run all this groovy GUI software simultaneously, so one can browse the Web at the same time one is pulling in e-mail and downloading bondage GIFs via ftp.

A dial-up IP account, unfortunately, tends to be terribly expensive. Is this a function of the extra equipment and software needed to provide IP service at the host end, or is this merely opportunism on the part of greedy providers taking advantage of a Netscape hungry public? Regardless, in most areas a SLIP or PPP connection is usually far more expensive than a plain old UNIX dial-up. In Los Angeles, for example, the going rate for a plain vanilla UNIX shell runs between $15 and $20 per month for unlimited usage, whereas an IP account at a major provider typically costs $2 per hour. At those rates a typical net.geek might get billed a hundred bucks or more each month. Can the “Cool Site of the Day” possibly be worth that much money?

There are other differences between shell (i.e., UNIX) and IP accounts. An unlimited usage shell account often includes amenities such as on-line storage space (5 or 10 megs being typical) and publicly-accessible ftp and Web subdirectories (a must for the self-publisher). In addition, there are also a number of interesting UNIX facilities that have no counterpart on the Mac or PC.

If your objective is the most Net for the buck, you’d want to pay the low rates for (and get the other advantages of) a UNIX shell account, but still be able to run Netscape and the other groovy GUI stuff. Some clever hackers at a place called Cyberspace Development, Inc. (CDI) figured out how to do just that. Their glorious creation is called tia (acronym expansion: The Internet Adapter). tia runs on the host machine and emulates a SLIP connection — it uses the IP address of the host machine to send and receive TCP/IP

MINDSURFING

The tia Transformation

Those of you forking over big bucks for a SLIP or PPP account are probably wasting money

by Yow

packets on behalf of your humble shell account. In other words, tia fools your shell account into thinking it is an IP account.

tia works. According to CDI’s propaganda, a shell account running tia is as fast as an actual SLIP account, sometimes even faster. Mr. Yow’s experience backs this up. You log in to your shell, like always, type “tia” at the prompt, and — shazam! Netscape! Eudora! Whee! When you get sick of downloading 5 meg ambient tracks at IUMA, you can quit out of your IP applications, go back to your term software, type control-C a bunch of times, and tia turns off. You are back at the UNIX prompt to wreak havoc in the old ways.

The disadvantages to using tia are slight. Since a plain vanilla shell account is not actually connected to the Internet with its own IP address, as is a machine with a true SLIP or PPP connection, you can’t use tia to, for example, maintain your own ftp site on your PC. (But would you even want to on a dial-up?) Some people report freezing of certain client applications, but I have experienced no such problem in three months of heavy use. Lastly, tia presently supports only SLIP, not PPP, so you can’t do some of the obscure fancy-dancing that a PPP link allows.

Installation is not trivial. You can get tia via ftp from CDI or a mirror site (tip: on some systems, tia is already set up somewhere, and all you have to do is create a link to the existing file), then you buy a tia license code for $25 using an unusual and fun e-mail form, and, finally, you obtain and configure all the TCP/IP utilities and software on your PC or Mac. This is not a big deal for the seasoned user and takes well under an hour. Neophytes and non-DIYers can use a easy-install package from another clever little company, Softaware; this product, called “Cheap Sunglasses”, includes (for $65)

tia and a tia license correctly installed on your shell account, a bunch of PC software, and the best-selling Adam Engst net book.

Since you’d otherwise be paying $2 per hour for SLIP access, the modest license and installation fees pay for themselves within a month. A free 14-day evaluation license is available if you’re nervous about whether tia will work on your machine.

tia is not the only SLIP emulator. There is a freeware (GNU license) program for Windows called TwinSock, for example, that does more or less the same thing as tia.

For obvious economic reasons — tia will probably cause dramatic reductions in IP account pricing over time — many Internet service providers are not wild about SLIP emulation. But since it causes no performance problems at the host end, the major providers are reluctantly permitting users to run tia, although most providers refuse to support it.

Wasting money needlessly is entropic. Do the right thing — dump that retro SLIP account in favor of an emulator.

Info about tia and Softaware’s installation packages:

http://marketplace.com/0/tia/tiahome.html

or send e-mail to

tia-info@marketplace.com

Info about TwinSock:

http://ugsparc31.eecg.utoronto.ca:8001/luk/tsfaq.html

Usenet discussion about IP emulators: alt.dcom.slip.emulators

MindSurfing is a series of articles about the cutting edge of the Internet for the dial-up user. Capitalized terms may be trademarks or service marks of the companies described above. Confused readers are welcome to send questions to the author at: mryow@aol.com.

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EXTROPY #15 (7:2) 2nd-3rd Quarter 1995