Re: [Pppext] warning suggestions for draft-bberry-pppoe-credit

Mark Lanzo wrote:
> On  9 Dec, William Allen Simpson wrote:
>> Going back 20+ years, I have had considerable experience deploying
>> protocols over radio links.  The best design would be to put a router
>> at every radio link.  Goodness gracious, TAL did it commercially going
>> on 15 years ago!  Simple 2 port routers are cheap!
> 
> Would it help if the proposal began with a clearer explanation that 
> although it "extends" PPPoE, that the usage is not in fact for PPPoE
> as traditionally recognized, but instead is being used as a protocol
> for using an ethernet as a backplace for communicating with external
> serial-port "concentrators"?  Is there a different RFC this group 
> should be looking at, which already provides just this sort of thing?
> 
Ah yes, I remember when it was thought that implementing PPP was too
complex for a "serial port concentrator" until Telebit did it on a 286,
and then many other firms.  Took Cisco years to catch up.

And I remember when it was thought PPP was too complex for end user
terminal devices, until Vocal did it in a modem that could sit in the
palm of your hand, and Qualcomm did it in a cell phone (IIRC, both were
186 embedded processors with something like 4K RAM).  The Qualcomm
phones could run *2* PPP sessions, one over the radio link, and
another over the serial port to a laptop, _and_ emulate a fax/modem,
_and_ run simultaneous voice.

(Disclaimer: I helped design and implement all products mentioned above,
so I'm probably biased.)

You might look at EIA/TIA/CTIA IS-99, although it's probably not an
Interim Standard anymore (having written the thing circa 1993).  And
that also would still require modification to the radio....

Really, just because there are "dumb" ethernet-radio bridges doesn't
mean they're a good idea.  Especially in these days of cheap memory.
Caveat emptor.

-- 
William Allen Simpson
     Key fingerprint =  17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26  DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32

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