Hi,
For those of you who don't know me, I am the Original Mr Cheap Won't
Spring Rs. 1000 For An Ethernet Hub chap. So being short of cash (as
usual) and wanting to hook up my 486 desktop and the notebook
together, I decided to try PLIP, the Parallel Line IP module.
I had to bug Amit Kalra for 4 days to get the appropriate cable (you
need a special parallel cable, sometimes known as a LapLink Cable) to
run IP over the parallel ports. However, once Amit came out of his
torpor and did hand the cable over, all I had to do was read the PLIP
mini-HOWTO, follow instructions in it and try a ping. Guess what? It
worked!
So now I have two computers at home which can be easily networked at
the cost of Rs. 100 (for the cable... though I haven't paid Amit yet
:-) . I get throughputs of about 38-40 KB/s on this link, and can
easily use one of the boxes as a gateway to the net and masq the other
computer through it.
Cons are, my 486 is really not built to handle PLIP's overheads (PLIP
is a CPU hog), and starts crawling whenever the PLIP link is
saturated. Apart from that, I'm very happy with PLIP. Try it out if
you're looking for a low-cost networking solution.
Regards,
-- Raju
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