1 Sep
2006
1 Sep
'06
4:24 p.m.
As I recall from foggy (possibly inaccurate)
memory.... PPP supports
"plain text" login before PPP is initiated, and also supports logging
in after PPP begins "in stream". To be more precise, I recall that
years ago our POPS gave login prompts. Some users client software
would just start PPP immediately and authenticate in protocol, and
others would actually send a typical login sequence and then start PPP.
Annex'en support auto-determination of protocol. They simply don't
say anything when you connect, and look to see what comes in the
door first. If it's a few returns, you get a login prompt. If it
looks like some kind of ppp packet, they go into ppp mode, and auth
using pap/chap.
Actually, FidoNet used to do something similar. The answering machine
would emit a particular character sequence (the "EMSI whack") as part
of its human-readable banner message. If the automated caller spoke
the EMSI protocol, it'd see that and they'd switch into EMSI instead
of using YooHoo or some other langauge. If the caller was a human,
they just wondered what the hell **EMSI_5467 meant. (Yes, I know
that's not quite right.)
De