All Rights Reserved. IP Services 'atppp' uses an external MacIP gateway such as a FastPath, GatorBox, MultiPort Gateway or Cisco router to support IP packet delivery. This is the same method used by Macintoshes on LocalTalk networks and is in widespread use. Protocol purists may express some reservations about this scheme, but the benefits outweigh the disgusting things that happen to an IP packet on a round trip to and from the client Macintosh. 'atppp' is a user-level process requiring no special setup or kernel modifications and links can be made from remote sites without changing IP addresses. On the slow serial link, where overheads are critical, the IP packet has the absolute minimum protocol baggage.
All encapsulation happens at network or ethernet speeds where it is less noticeable.
The files are available in compressed tar format via anonymous FTP from munnari. The default 'atppp' setting for all compression options is off. The format of the argument is a 32-bit bitmap with each bit representing a character from 0x00 to 0x1f. 0x00000003 escapes both 0x00 and 0x01 bytes. Use this option if your terminal server or intervening host will not pass certain control characters.