sl(4) - NetBSD Manual Pages

SL(4)                     NetBSD Programmer's Manual                     SL(4)


NAME

     sl - Serial Line IP (SLIP) network interface


SYNOPSIS

     pseudo-device sl [count]


DESCRIPTION

     The sl interface allows asynchronous serial lines to be used as IP net-
     work interfaces using the SLIP protocol.  The sl interface can use Van
     Jacobson TCP header compression and ICMP filtering.

     However, SLIP can only transmit IP packets between preconfigured hosts on
     an asynchronous serial link.  It has no provision for address negotia-
     tion, carriage of additional protocols (e.g.  XNS, AppleTalk, DECNET),
     and is not designed for synchronous serial links.  This is why SLIP has
     been superceded by the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP), which does all of
     those things, and much more.


DIAGNOSTICS

     sl%d: af%d not supported.  The interface was handed a message with ad-
     dresses formatted in an unsuitable address family; the packet was
     dropped.


SEE ALSO

     intro(4), inet(4), ppp(4), slattach(8), sliplogin(8), slstats(8)

     A Nonstandard for Transmission of IP Datagrams over Serial Lines: SLIP,
     RFC, 1055, June 1988.


HISTORY

     The sl device appeared in NetBSD 1.0.

NetBSD 1.4                      August 10, 1996                              1