11 Apr
2011
11 Apr
'11
1:42 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Michael Kerpan once stated:
On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 8:46 AM, Geoff Oltmans
<oltmansg at bellsouth.net> wrote:
Back in college I used Kermit all the time. The dialups to the University
were not 8-bit clean, and the procedure one used to make the path between
the modem and the target system [1] didn't always worked (at least, in my
case I could never get an 8-bit clean path) so often times the *only* file
transfer protocol that would work was Kermit.
-spc (And at 300, speed wasn't really much of an issue ... 8-)
[1] The university modems were hooked into a terminal server made by DEC
and run by the internal university IT department. To get to the
Unix servers in the CS department, I had to connect to an
intermediate system (which meant we had to have yet another
account), *then* log into the Unix system [2]. Making sure the
entire path:
modem -> terminal server -> DEC system? -> Unix
was 8-bit clean annoying.
[2] Getting to the University Library computer system was even more fun;
I recall about three or four intermediate systems you had to go
through, one of which never gave a prompt and you had to type
blindly, go down a flight of stairs that didn't exist in the dark,
and check the filing cabinet in an unsused bathroom marked with
a "Beware of the Leopard" sign. Fun times [3]
[3] Not really.
Does anyone in any real sense use Kermit these
days? Even back during my
bbs days Kermit was a rarely supported and/or slow protocol that wasn't
exactly a first choice. Wasn't it designed for slower packet switched
networks the likes of telenet and tymnet?
As far as I can tell, Kermit was initially intended for use over
serial links. A lot of its poor performance (which wasn't actually so
bad over a decent link to a big iron system) comes from the fact that
it places data integrity over speed in its priority list. While this
was considered a bad thing in the world of BBSes, where slow links
meant that every last bit per second was valuable, for faster local or
leased line serial links there was no issue. Additionally, the focus
on data integrity means that Kermit can be very useful over marginal
lines such as third world telephone lines or ham radio modems.