hi Mike,

 * Re:
   dd.  08-02-96, 08:16:05
   to   Petric Frank
 PF>> I have a similar problem. What about a PPP program which
 PF>> take an open COM-port handle provided by a mailer or BBS
 PF>> program ?
 PF>> The PPP.EXE provided with Warp Connect always want to handle
 PF>> the port himself. There is no option to let PPP to take over
 PF>> an handle of a COM-port (connection established, carrier
 PF>> detected).

 MB> Why would you want to do this?  If you are dialing out, PPP.EXE will
 MB> call SLATTACH.EXE to run a connector script.  If you are answering,
 MB> you need something more elaborate than PPP.EXE anyway.

A modem is a scarse resource, and thus you need some way to control access
to it.  A FidoNet Technology Network compatible mailer is the ideal
candidate controller, as it was designed to handle both incoming and
outgoing traffic, and to hand off access to third party applications, and
to modify its beheaviour based on the time of day (to comply with the Zone
Mail Hour requirements).  OTOH, PPP and friends stink: PPP doesn't protect
its COM port (watch Binkley resetting the modem when your newsfeed runs out
of its time slot); watch SLATTACH throwing its hands up in the air on the
first BUSY signal.  IAK only works if you want to babysit it, and I don't:
I've paid my teaching money to PTT Telecom years back when I had to call
interlocaly to access FidoNet with Telix and pray the XRS download wouldn't
fail again... at 1200 bps!

To make a long story short: if I hadn't stumbled over Ola Garsted's
JobQueue(/Server), I'ld be completely lost.  JQ is great: I originally had
only one server to prevent more than one tosser session running at a time
(I had Binkley set to process any inbound traffic then: nowaday it does it
only for compressed mail - onceaday expect on Saturday, when I poll my
FEBETA feed too), and otherwise serialize access to the
Binkley-style-but-not-Binkley logfile, so creating another one to serialize
access to COM2 came quick after suffering PPPs bugginess.  Now I only have
to deal with starting PPP (done with Cron/2, CMD /c MAILER.CMD with does
some preparation too), getting it to redial (PPPDIAL and a script for that
one too), waiting on PPP to get finaly into the net so you start to do what
you wanted, and killing it when done.  Noone would have ever heard about
FidoNet if Tom Jennings had thought that was acceptable!

regards,
         hugo (I promise, no shreeks for the next two years)