5. Free PPP Software Packages

• Free PPP FOR SunOS 4.1.x
• Free PPP for BSD
• Free PPP for SVR4
• Free PPP for MSDOS
• Free PPP for AmigaOS
• Free PPP for NeXT
• Free PPP for Macintosh
• Free PPP for Ultrix
• Free PPP for Linux

5.1 free PPP FOR SunOS 4.1.x

5.1.1 ppp-2.2 for BSD, SunOS 4.x, Ultrix and Linux

Authors

Paul Mackerras <paulus@cs.anu.edu.au>, Brad Parker <brad@FCR.COM> and contributors

Ultrix port: sundstrom@stkhlm.enet.dec.com (Per Sundstrom) and robert@robur.slu.se (Robert Olsson)

Linux port: Michael Callahan <callahan@maths.ox.ac.uk> and Al Longyear <longyear@netcom.com>

Architectures

Sunos 4.x at least on Sparc,

Solaris 2.x at least on Sparc and x86

NetBSD at least on 80?86 and Amiga

Ultrix on DECstations

Linux on 80386/80486/Pentium

FTP archives

cs.anu.edu.au:/pub/software/ppp/ ppp-2.3.5.tar.gz

Also from merit.edu:/pub/ppp/sunos-new

Self-Description

ppp-2.1.1 is now available from dcssoft.anu.edu.au, and shortly from merit.edu in /pub/ppp or /pub/ppp/sunos-new, I hope. This release includes Linux support, thanks to Michael Callahan and Al Longyear, as well as SunOS 4.x, {386,Net,Free}BSD and Ultrix (which were supported in previous versions).

Other new and changed features in this version include:

security improvements

improvements and a man page for chat (thanks to Al Longyear)

pppd can now use LCP echo-requests to check that the serial connection is intact, and terminate the link if not (from the Linux port)

pppd can now reads a port-specific options file (/etc/ppp/options.)

new pppd options vj-max-slots and -vjccomp to control how many connection IDs the VJ header compressor will use, and whether it can compress the connection ID

several bugs fixed

Paul Mackerras paulus@cs.anu.edu.au
Dept. of Computer Science
Australian National University

... The main change [of 2.0] from ppp-1.3.1 is that the new release contains a substantially improved version of pppd. New features in pppd include:

• Vastly improved security and authentication features
• Conforms to RFCs 1331, 1332, 1334
• Reads options from files as well as the command line
• Does proxy-ARP and default route creation if requested

Paul Mackerras <paulus@cs.anu.edu.au>

Comment

ppp-2.2 included in NetBSD distributions, reported to work on NetBSD-Amiga and -i386
ppp-2.3beta in NetBSD-current ppp-2.0.4 is reported to work on NetBSD-Intel and SunOS-4.x-Sparc (did anybody try NetBSD-Sparc?)
ppp-2.1.2 works on Linux on Intel (did anybody try Linux/680x0, e.g. Amiga?)

Problems

PPP 2.1.2 on a VAX Ultrix On VAXes with RTS/CTS flow control I can run the serial port at 19.2K and use an MRU of 1500. On VAXes with MMJ serial connectors without RTS/CTS flow control, I have to use MRU 296 but still specify the crtscts option to pppd, even though the hardware doesn't support it.

Barry Kort <bkort@copernicus.bbn.com>

Authors

Kirk Smith <ks@phoenix.acn.purdue.edu>, peter.galvaby@micromuse.ac.uk and others

Features

demand-dial, filtering, header compression, server and client, scripting; SunOS loadable modules partially supported

Comment

basically dp-2.2-beta with typos corrected and non-sun4c kernel architecture supported (tested on sun4c, sun4m and sun3 machines, but has problems on sun3x architectures). It has a configuration file, which tells where the other configuration files are. Loadable modules work as long as you don't unload them. Finally survives even talk(1) without crashing the machine. If you see older versions, especially dp-2.0.tar.Z, toss them immediately!

Plans

Solaris 2.1 (sunos 5.1) is supported in the dp-3.1 version (see chapter SVR4).

Mailing list maintainer

ks@phoenix.acn.purdue.edu

Mailing-list

dp-list@phoenix.acn.purdue.edu (don't send 'add' or 'delete' requests here!!!

FTP archive

ftp@phoenix.acn.purdue.edu:pub/

WWW document

http://www.acn.purdue.edu/dp/dp.html

5.1.3 Perkins/Clements/Fox/Christy PPP for SunOS

Last version

patch level 6 of 1991-10-04

Anonymous FTP

[not cited to protect the innocent]

Comment

should be considered out of date. You need at least a special patch to fix most of a memory leak, and might have other problems. Successor packages are dp-2.3/3.0 and ppp-2.1.

5.2 free PPP for BSD:

5.2.1 ppp-2.2

5.3 free PPP for SVR4

5.3.1 ...for generic SVR4

Author

Marc Boucher <marc@cam.org>

Public FTP archive

FTP.CAM.ORG:/systems/unix/svr4/CAM-pppd-0.85.tar.gz.

self-description

The current version is 0.85. Basic support for synchronous PPP and BinTec ISDN was recently added. The wrong interface initialization order resulting in in_interfaces not being incremented properly have been fixed.
...
Unlimited redistribution is now allowed.
The software is being released AS-IS. I currently do not have time to provide support or implement further enhancements, sorry. The future of the package is uncertain. If someone is willing to pick it up, or integrate my SVR4 changes in a newer PPP package, feel free.

Marc Boucher

Comment

CAM PPP does not work!
I have the patches necessary to make ppp-2.2 work on generic SVR4. These are very small patches and make ppp-2.2 work on generic SVR4 just the same way it works on Solaris, AIX, etc., etc.

joe@zircon.seattle.wa.us

5.3.2 ...SunOS 5.x/Solaris 2.x

dp-3.1 has been out for quite a while. It works with Solaris 2.1 (for anyone foolish enough to still be running it), 2.2, 2.3, probably 2.4.

"...It is much more stable and better behaved than the Solaris 2.3 ppp from Sun...." (Larry Williamson <larry@mitra.com>)

There is also a specialized WWW documentFAQ at http://www.acn.purdue.edu/dp/dp.html.

5.4 Free PPP for MSDOS

Authors

Phil Karn (KA9Q), Johan Reinalda (WG7J), with additions from lots of others. PPP code written by Katie Stevens of UC Davis, based on the original implementation by Drew Perkins of CMU. Updated by Bill Simpson and Glenn McGregor of the University of Michigan. James Dugal (N5KNX) has taken over development of JNOS.

Features

server, client, scripting, redial,

Public FTP sites:

pc.usl.edu:/pub/ham/jnos/ James's local ftp site. This directory is guaranteed to have the most recent release of JNOS.

ftp.ucsd.edu:hamradio/packet/tcpip/incoming

Comment

There is a entry in the configuration recipes section.

Ftp archive

ftp.merit.edu:internet.tools/ppp/dos/etherppp.zip

gopher://gopher.archive.umich.edu:7055/11/msdos/communications/ncsa/etherppp-new.zip.new

Comment

16 Mar 1994 The "NCSAPPP" version of the DOS PPP packet driver is no longer being distributed due to the availability of the newer "ETHERPPP" version of the packet driver. This packet driver emulates an Ethernet class packet driver and is thus compatible with a wider range of applications. The older driver presented only a "PPP" class packet driver and only worked with applications which knew specifically of "PPP" class packet drivers.

-Larry Blunk, Merit Network, Inc. / The University of Michigan

Then ftp to merit.edu (notice: not ftp.merit.edu) and from the /pub/ppp/dos directory, fetch etherppp.commands. (The etherppp-new executable will seem to be there also, but you'll find you can't download it.)

The documentation file in the archive with the executable was written for a much older version of the software, and is obsolete in several respects. The /k parameter apparently is no longer needed in 1.9.49 beta. And although you can use the supplied version of TERMIN to unload the driver from memory, it is no longer necessary. PPP has a /u switch which will do the same thing.

On the plus side, the dialer works nicely. When the driver is unloaded from memory, it will automatically hang up the modem. On the minus side, in addition to random exception errors and lockups, the thing is a memory hog. PPP 1.9.49 takes up over 120,000 bytes of memory. That doesn't leave Minuet's graphical web browser enough room to function properly. (Runtime error #204 will commonly appear.)

When fetching news with Minuet 17A and PPP 1.9.49 beta using Merit's default or "quick" configuration, I frequently crashed on Exception 13 errors. The following seems to work better, though not 100 percent stable--gopher and ftp in 18A sometimes generate exception errors.

ppp ipcp local compress allow
ppp ipcp open
ppp lcp local accm 0
ppp lcp local acfc on
ppp lcp local pfc on
ppp lcp local magic allow
ppp lcp open

NEIL PARKS <nparks@torah.org>

Very incomplete features

client only

5.4.2.2 PPPPKT

Author

Frank Molzahn

ftp directory

oak.oakland.edu, in one of the directories, where packet drivers are found.

comment

The product is not a complete packet driver by itself. It requires some additional files that are actually part of Novell's commercial networking products. Fortunately, Novell makes them available for free download via anonymous ftp, if you know where to look. Molzahn provides complete and detailed instructions for finding and installing them. PPPPKT does not have any kind of dialer. You have to dial the old-fashioned way--use a plain term pgm that will establish the connection and then get out of the way without hanging up the phone line. (Telix, for example, does this very nicely.)

Performance is a mixed bag. News (with 17A) and Gopher are very fast. Mail is so slow that "time out" errors occur frequently. Increasing the "I/O timeout" and "retransmit timeout" numbers in Minuet's Setup/Network screen increases the chances the mail might go through eventually--but not always. Telnet is so slow that it appears to lock up. ftp performance is odd: Logon negotiations and directory listings are slow, but once you start to fetch a file it will come roaring in faster than with any other packet driver I've tried. PPPPKT takes up less memory than Merit PPP, so your chances of successfully browsing a graphical web page are better.

NEIL PARKS <nparks@torah.org>

Ftp archive

ftp.biochem.mpg.de:/pc/isdn

Self-Description

" ISPA is an ethernet-type (class=1) packet-driver for IP-Routing or remote Ethernet bridging over ISDN. ISPA communicates with the ISDN card using the Common ISDN API 1.1 specification (a standard defined by German ISDN card manufacturers and the German Telekom). Because of this, ISPA is completely hardware independent and has successfully been tested with many active or passive ISDN cards.

ISPA supports a large set of protocols for communication with other vendors ISDN routers or servers. Among these protocols are: LAPB, Frame-Relay, PPP (including PAP support), SLIP, Cisco-HDLC.

ISPA was developed for use with PCROUTE as a cheap Ethernet-ISDN Router. However, it has been succesfully tested with a wide range of TCP/IP programs e.g. WATTCP based IP programs, PC-NFS, NCSA & CU -Telnet/ftp, gopher, popmail, PCTCP 2.2 or Trumpet WINSOCK.

ISPA was written for use with ISDN BRI PC cards. I myself have used ISPA only with the Teles.S0 card, one of the cheapest ISDN cards in Germany. But I got responses from users of ISPA that it will work at least with the following other ISDN cards: AVM A1, AVM B1, Diehl SCOM, Diehl SoTec, NICCY 1000 PC, mbp Solis. Many German vendors of ISDN cards have started to support besides the German signaling system (1TR6) and Euro-ISDN (EDSS1) also other signaling systems in their Common ISDN API 1.1 implementation.

The current version of ISPA supports two independent active connections at a time. Alternativly a connection can use two B-channels for loadsharing. ISPA can be loaded more than once, if more than two simultanous connections to different sites are desired. Loadsharing can be configured as static or dynamic (bandwith on demand). Dynamic loadsharing can be used concurrently to a second independent connection.

Loadsharing over two channels is implemented using simple round robin scheduling, because IP doesn't require the orginal packet sequence. It's completly hardware independent. It's works the same way as Cisco implements loadsharing over to X.21 interfaceses and I have tested ISPA with a Cisco Router and two Philips TA's. Sure it will not double the performance this way, but around 13kBytes/s you can get."

Herbert Hanewinkel, July 1994

5.5 Free PPP for AmigaOS

5.5.1 AmigaNOS (KA9Q NOS port to Amiga)

Mailing-list-maintainer

amiga-slip-request@ccs.carleton.ca

FAQ posting

comp.sys.amiga.datacomm, every 21 days

Author

JOHN_H@fs2.mcc.ac.uk (John Heaton)

Public ftp archive

ftp.demon.co.uk: /pub/amiga/setup/setupv4.lha 419364 bytes (Setup for newcomers; Note that this contains some information which is quite specific for the demon.co.uk site only) /pub/amiga/anos/anos29k.lha 196742 bytes (if you already have an earlier version of setup and just need AmigaNOS 2.9k. Also on wuarchive.wustl.edu:/mirrors3/ka9q/amiga/anos29k.lha

Help File

wuarchive.wustl.edu:/systems/amiga/incoming/text/AmigaNOS-help-V2.lha or ftp.demon.co.uk:/pub/amiga/setup/AmigaNOS-help-V2.lha

Comments

AmigaNOS2.9k.lha contains PPP as well as SLIP. Seems to be a rfc1171 like implementation, enhanced with a few rfc1331/2 features (like most other implementations I know of)

5.5.2 PPP.device for Sana2 compatible network packages (AS225, AmiTCP, Envoy)

5.5.2.1 Kruse-PPP 1.23 evaluation version.

Author

Holger Kruse <kruse@cs.ucf.edu>

Public FTP archive

on Aminet:comm/net; ftp to e.g. wuarchive.wustl.edu, cd to /pub/aminet and read the instruction about the nearest mirror to you.

Status

Demo-Version, with all configuration options fixed to their defaults (with the exception of the IP adresses, of course). For the full version see 7.1.1

Supports IPCP, is reported to work with AmiTCP-3.0, AmiTCP-4.x and AS225R2, claimed to work with AmiTCP-2.3.

More Information

available at http://www.america.com/~kruse/amiga/PPP.html

5.6 Free PPP for NeXT

5.6.1 Old NeXT-PPP

Public ftp archive

merit.edu:pub/ppp/next-ppp0.3.tar.Z

Author

miron@cs.sfu.ca (Miron S. Cuperman)

Comment

The author claimed:

I heard that it doesn't work with 3.0. I haven't looked at it myself. It's just a straight port of ppp-1.1. It works with NeXTStep 2.1. It is based on the BSD part of ppp-1.1, but with header compression integrated. I'm not currently supporting (or even using) it.

But dstrout@sun.REST.TASC.COM (Dave Strout via MacPPP and Eudora) claims that:

"I have gotten the next-ppp0.2 to work just fine under NeXTStep 3.0. I have only tried MacPPP running against it, but telnet, eudora, and GopherApp all work fine. FTP does not work at 2400bps, but does at 9600. dave."

<philipp@res.enst.fr> told me that:

You state ppp-0.2 as being the latest version for NeXTSTEP. It isn't. ppp-0.3 is. However, ppp-0.3 and 0.2 don't run on NeXTSTEP 3.1 or 3.2 (I believe), and both have byte-ordering and byte-alignment problems for White (intel) hardware.

Initial reports are that it is fairly solid.

N.B.: this is *not* the same implementation as Steve Perkins but rather an update of Miron Cuperman's ppp-0.3.

It supports all features of 2.1.2 except:

• receiver AsyncMaps
• MRU negotiation
• receiver (asymmetric) A/C compression negotiation
• Proxy ARP (server mode)

The code may be freely used by individuals but the copyright forbids (without prior agreement) commercial use of this software. Simply stated, Joe Blow can use this software at home, but commercial PPP providers can not use this software for their exploitation without written agreement from the authors.

It is available from ftp://ftp.enst.fr/incoming/philipp/ as ppp-2.1.2-beta.tar.gz and ftp://ftp.cs.orst.edu/software/NeXT/sources/comm/ppp-2.1.2-beta.tar.gz (see ppp-2.1.2-beta.README.

There are reports that it is difficult to get it to compile on 3.2, and after you succeed, it doesn't work, as some system calls are missing. The reports about it being difficult to compile aren't true. These people simply haven't read the readme's. It states quite clearly that under Black (Motorola) 3.2, you need to compile with -DIOLog=printf since the DriverKit wasn't ported to Black hardware.

Note: PPP-2.1.2 has been obsoleted by PPP-2.2.

PPP-2.2 is in beta release. The NeXT sources for PPP-2.2 are not currently bundled with the PPP-2.2 Beta distribution. However, they may be retrieved from several sites. Both sources and an MAB binary only installer package are available.

Since the code base is still evolving, we have set up a WWW site that always has current information on the package. For more information, please check out http://www.thoughtport.com:8080/PPP/.

If you don't currently have access to a viewer, you may grab a README through the anonymous FTP service at ftp.thoughtport.com:/pub/next/ppp/README. This file will have information on the latest versions.

This package has been tested on Motorola, Intel, Sparc, and HP systems running OS 3.2 and 3.3. It will not work on OS versions earlier than 3.2. The package works with the standard NeXT supplied serial drivers as well as the MuXV1.7 driver and the latest NeXT serial drivers (see NeXTAnswers for details). It also works alongside NXFax.

Note: There are some problems running the latest version on Sparc and HP architectures that have the actual 3.3 release. It does work on systems having OS 3.3 Pre-release.

5.7 free PPP for Macintosh

Author

ljb@merit.edu (Larry Blunk)

Public ftp archive

ftp.merit.edu:internet.tools/ppp/mac/...

Status

macppp2.0.1.hqx seems to be the newest binary release. There are also sources. From the 'Installing MacPPP' document:

"...MacPPP 1.1 [as well as 2.0.1] is a Line Access Protocol (LAP mdev) driver for MacTCP. This version does not support AppleTalk over PPP.

MacPPP requires MacTCP 1.1 or higher, Macintosh System 6.0.5 or higher, and a Hayes-compatible modem for dial-in connections. You can also use MacPPP over hardwired asynchrounous connections, ..."

Please update your Mac PPP info, as it is seriously outdated. The current version of Macppp is 2.2.0a and there is now Freeppp 1.0.2 which is an outgrowth of Macppp 2.1.2sd. Macppp 2.1.2sd and Freeppp 1.0.2 and Macppp 2.1.4 (Apple Internet Connection Kit) and Freeppp 2.5 are supposedly the only ones that have a chance of working with Open Transport and System 7.5.2

rsdemo@name1.ak.net

Comment

There's an entry in the configuration section above. There are PostScript and text installation documents at the ftp site. Although these date back to the 1.1.x releases, they're still useful for installing MacPPP 2.0.1.

For a workaround for a MacPPP 2.0.1 on non-US System 6, look into the configuration section, too

newer info, not yet verified by me:

Please update your Mac PPP info, as it is seriously outdated. The current version of Macppp is 2.2.0a and there is now Freeppp 1.0.2 which is an outgrowth of Macppp 2.1.2sd. Macppp 2.1.2sd and Freeppp 1.0.2 and Macppp 2.1.4 (Apple Internet Connection Kit) and Freeppp 2.5 are supposedly the only ones that have a chance of working with Open Transport and System 7.5.2

rsdemo@name1.ak.net

5.8 free PPP for Ultrix

5.9 free PPP for Linux

Authors

Michael Callahan <callahan@maths.ox.ac.uk>

Al Longyear <longyear@netcom.com>

public ftp site

sunsite.unc.edu and ftp.funet.fi

self-description

Version 1.0.0 is meant for use with kernels 1.0.0 and later.