LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY

COURSE NAME: CAP564 DATA COMMUNICATION AND NETWORKING Material Type: Term Paper on Pros and cons of SLIP over PPP under data link layer

SUBMITTED TO: LEC. Anuragini

SUBMITTED BY:YOGESH KUMAR SECTION: RD1207 ROLL NO.: RD1207B43 REG. ID.: 11209941

INDEX
INTRODUCTION SLIP PPP PROBLEMS WITH SLIP DATA FORMAT OF SLIP BENEFIT OF PPP DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SLIP AND PPP MULTI-PROTOCOLS CONFIGURATION NEGOTIATION AUTOMATIC LOGIN DIFFERENCE SCOPE FUNCTION PROS AND CONS SLIP AND PPP HOW IT ALL WORK SLIP AND PPP OVERVIEW SLIP/PPP VS HOST DIAL UP ACCESS

Introduction

As the Internet has been increasingly popularized in newspapers, magazines, and books, more and more people are joining or seeking to join the community of Internet users online. Some subscribe to commercial services like CompuServe and America Online that are adding Internet-related features to their existing services. Others purchase accounts on commercial services which provide Internet access as their main offering, or get accounts on Free-Nets and other community network systems which offer Internet access as an adjunct to community information. Finally, there is a small but rapidly growing number of people who are connecting to the Internet directly from their PCs or Macintoshes without having to login to larger systems and put up with the hassle of UNIX commands or restrictive menus. In this document I discuss this type of personal Internet access: both how you use it and how it works.

SLIP
SLIP is so simple it hardly deserves to be called a protocol. It is designed to transmit signals over a serial connection (which in most cases means a modem and a telephone line) and has very low control overhead, meaning that it doesn't add much information to the network layer data that it is transmitting. Compared to the 18 bytes that Ethernet adds to every packet, for example, SLIP adds only 1 byte. Of course, with only 1 byte of overhead, SLIP can't provide functions like error detection, network layer protocol identification, security, or anything else.

PPP
PPP is, in most cases, the protocol you use when you access the Internet by establishing a dial-up connection to an ISP. Many other WAN technologies use it as well. PPP is more complex than SLIP and is designed to provide a number of services that SLIP lacks. These include the ability of the systems to exchange IP addresses, carry data generated by multiple network layer protocols (which is called multiplexing), and support different authentication protocols. Still, PPP does all this using only a 5-byte header, which is larger than the SLIP header, but still less than half the size of the Ethernet frame.

Problems with SLIP

It does not perform any error detection and correction. It supports only IP (Internet Protocol). So, it cannot be used for other networks that do not use IP (for e.g.: Novell LANs). It does not support the allocation of dynamic IP address.

 Both the communicating systems should be assigned a specific IP address before hand. It does not provide any authentication. It is not an approved Internet standard.

Data Format of SLIP

The data format of SLIP is: A special END character (equivalent to decimal 192) marks the end of data.

Benefits of PPP
PPP defines the format of the frame to be exchanged between the devices. It defines Link Control Protocol (LCP) for: Establishing the link between two devices. Maintaining this established link. Configuring this link. Terminating this link after the transfer. It provides error detection. Unlike SLIP, that supports only IP, it supports multiple protocols. It supports dynamic allocation of IP address. It provides authentication. It provides NCP (Network Control Protocol), that supports variety of network layer protocol.

Difference between SLIP and PPP.

SLIP is called Serial Line Internet Protocol and PPP is the acronym of Point-to-Point Protocol.

Multi-Protocols
PPP has some additional benefits. Unlike SLIP (which can only transport TCP/IP traffic), PPP is a multi-protocol transport mechanism. This means that PPP not only transports TCP/IP traffic, but can also transport IPX and Appletalk traffic, to name just a few. Better yet, PPP lets you transport all of these protocols at the same time - on the same connection. This is often not a concern for most users since their purpose of either

using SLIP or PPP is to connect to the internet and the internet uses TCP/IP only. Therefore, there is no need to transport other protocols. PPP has some additional benefits. Unlike SLIP (which can only transport TCP/IP traffic), PPP is a multi-protocol transport mechanism. This means that PPP not only transports TCP/IP traffic, but can also transport IPX and Apple talk traffic, to name just a few. Better yet, PPP lets you transport all of these protocols at the same time - on the same connection. This is often not a concern for most users since their purpose of either using SLIP or PPP is to connect to the internet and the internet uses TCP/IP only. Therefore, there is no need to transport other protocols.

Configuration Negotiation
With SLIP, you have to know the IP address assigned to you by your service provider. You also need to know the IP address of the remote system you will be dialing into. If IP addresses are dynamically assigned (depends on your service provider), your SLIP software needs to be able to pick up the IP assignments automatically failing which you have to setup them up manually. You may also need to configure such details as MTU (maximum transmission unit), MRU (maximum receive unit), use of VJ compression header (ie., CSLIP), etc. All these can get confusing pretty fast. PPP addresses this problem by negotiating configuration parameters at the start of the connection. This can greatly simplify the configuration of your PPP connection. With SLIP, you have to know the IP address assigned to you by your service provider. You also need to know the IP address of the remote system you will be dialing into. If IP addresses are dynamically assigned (depends on your service provider), your SLIP software needs to be able to pick up the IP assignments automatically failing which you have to setup them up manually. You may also need to configure such details as MTU (maximum transmission unit), MRU (maximum receive unit), use of VJ compression header etc. All these can get confusing pretty fast. PPP addresses this problem by negotiating configuration parameters at the start of the connection. This can greatly simplify the configuration of your PPP connection.

Automatic Login
Most SLIP/PPP software can dial-up and automatically login for you. However, they often depend on your service provider's system sending out standard prompts (eg, "login:" to get the login name and "password:" to get the password). If they are any way non-standard, you either need to write a script to automate the login process yourself or login manually in the terminal emulation mode of your SLIP/PPP software.

PPP provides two methods with which logins can be automated - PAP (Password Authentication Protocol) and CHAP (Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol). Both provide the means for your system to automatically send your login user_id/password information to the remote system. Most SLIP/PPP software can dial-up and automatically login for you. However, they often depend on your service provider's system sending out standard prompts (eg, "login:" to get the login name and "password:" to get the password). If they are any way non-standard, you either need to write a script to automate the login process yourself or login manually in the terminal emulation mode of your SLIP/PPP software. PPP provides two methods with which logins can be automated - PAP (Password Authentication Protocol) and CHAP (Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol). Both provide the means for your system to automatically send your login user id/password information to the remote system.

Differences
SLIP and PPP are as different as two protocols can possibly be. SLIP is so basic, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) were reluctant to give it its endorsement as an official standard. PPP is so complicated that it is more than a protocol. It is a suite of protocols.

Scope
A data link protocol has the responsibility of getting a data packet across one link in a network. If that packet has to cross several links to get to its final destination, the complexity of routing and addressing is handled by other protocols.

Function
SLIP receives an IP packet, breaks it up into bytes, sends a frame character to signify the start of the packet, sends each byte and then sends another frame character to mark the end of the packet. It does nothing else. PPP establishes a link, negotiates parameters, has control messaging and includes systems for authentication and encryption. There are a large number of protocols in PPP.

Another Difference between SLIP and PPP

1. SLIP stands for Serial Line Internet Protocol. PPP stands for Point-to-Point Protocol 2. SLIP does not perform error detection & correction. PPP performs error detection & correction. 3. SLIP supports only IP. PPP supports multiple protocols. 4. IP address is assigned statically. IP address is assigned dynamically

5. SLIP does not provide any authentication. PPP provides authentication. 6. SLIP is not approved Internet standard. PPP is approved Internet standard.

Pros and Cons SLIP or PPP

In summary, heres what you get if you have a SLIP or PPP account:

. .

You have dialup Internet access using a special dialup number and a user id and password associated with that access. You can run a wide variety of applications over the dialup link to implement traditional Internet services such as electronic mail, FTP, Telnet, and Usenet news, as well as newer services like Gopher and Mosaic/WWW.

. Using some Internet services may require that you have additional
user ids and passwords assigned to you by your Internet access provider. Other services do not require this; that is, they are either inherently anonymous in nature or involve separate arrangements with other organizations Most of these services can only be used while the dialup Internet connection is active. you can do at least some things offline.

How it all works

Having told you how you can access the Internet directly from your PC or Macintosh, Id like to go now into more detail about whats going on behind the scenes. My apologies for the level of technical detail; Ive tried to keep it to the minimum necessary to make my points. Lets start with what being on the Internet really means. For your PC or Macintosh to be on the Internet in the sense that Im using the term, the following three things must be true:

Your PC or Macintosh has software which can send and receive data using the TCP/IP family of communications protocols. Your PC or Macintosh has some sort of communications link to an Internet access point from which data it sends can go out over the Internet to other systems, and by which data sent from other systems on the Internet can be sent to your PC or Macintosh. When connected in this way, your PC or Macintosh has an identifying number (called an IP address) which other systems use in sending data to your PC or Macintosh, and by which youre

PC or Macintosh identifies itself when sending data to other systems.

Serial Line Interface Protocol and Point to Point Protocol (SLIP and PPP)
PPP and SLIP are Internet standards for transmission of IP packets over serial lines.

SLIP/PPP Overview
A compromise between a direct internet connection and host dial-up access is to use SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) or PPP (Point to Point Protocol). From now, we'll just say SLIP/PPP to refer to both SLIP and/or PPP - they are similar in several respects. SLIP/PPP provides the ability to transport TCP/IP traffic over serial lines, such as dial-up telephone lines, between two computers. Both computers run TCP/IP based network software. This allows a home user to get direct internet access from their own PC with just a simple modem and a telephone line. For many users, this is an exciting way to gain internet connectivity at a low cost. With SLIP/PPP, you can run your favorites GUI based web browser, ftp client, email client etc - right from your own PC. SLIP/PPP is really a form of direct internet connection in the sense that:

Your computer has a communications link to the internet, even if it is via a service provider Your computer has the networking software that can speak TCP/IP with other computers on the internet Your computer has an identifying address (IP address) at which it can be contacted by other computers on the internet.

SLIP/PPP vs Host Dial-Up Access

Both SLIP/PPP and normal dial-up access (sometimes referred to as a "terminal session") involve dialing into a remote computer system (which is directly on the internet) and logging in. Some people may have difficulty understanding the difference. The key distinction is that with SLIP/PPP, your own PC is communicating using native IP with other computers on the internet while with normal host dial-up, your PC simply acts as a dumb terminal to the remote computer which then communicates with other computers on the internet using native IP. When you run a ftp client with host dial-up, the files you receive are

stored on the remote computer. With SLIP, however, the files are received directly on your own PC. You can run GUI based clients (telnet, web browsers, etc) on your own PC and directly make use of internet services.