Chapter 4. Soup Cans and String: Last-Ditch Communications Methods

Difficult-o-Meter: 5 (as difficult as this book gets!)

Covers:

Parallel-Line IP

Advanced network configuration

Kernel compiling

agetty and mgetty

We've got two problems in this chapter. The first is what can you do when you find yourself confronted with a stubbornly incompatible network, as I did when I had to integrate my laptop with a token-ring network. The second is how to keep control of your home network without access to an IP network, either because none is available or because your own network is under attack by bored teenagers.

The two techniques we cover in this chapter are quite different, but they are alike in that they are both rather primitive but nonetheless effective means of communication and control.

Did you ever as a kid take two soup cans and a length of string and make a telephone? We're going to show how to do that as an adult. But this time, it's digital!

I recently bought myself a preloaded Linux laptop. I hadn't owned a laptop before, I had never had need of one. Because I was getting back into consulting following a stint as an employee on the Web applications design team that still employs two of my co-authors, I knew I would often be unable to control my desktop. Given this, I wanted the laptop so I could have Linux with me, whatever level of control was maintained over the client-provided computers.

It has served me well. With a 10/100 ethernet card and a basic Linux laptop, I was always able to have my Linux, even when I was not allowed to install it on my desktop.

Then I came to my first pure "Big Blue" shop in some time. They used OS/2 on their desktops, AIX on their mid- tier , OS/390 on their mainframes, and, of course, token-ring to link it all together. I don't know if you've ever priced token-ring cards and multistation access units (MAUs), but they are quite expensive, especially PCMCIA and Cardbus ones. There was no way I was going to pay almost as much as I paid for the laptop just to hook up to a token-ring network, even though Linux will do token-ring just fine. Time for the soup cans and string.