Subj : Analog modems in the digital age.
To   : James Digriz
From : mark lewis
Date : Thu Apr 05 2018 11:09 pm


 On 2018 Apr 04 17:11:44, you wrote to All:

 JD> Appreciate any comments or direction, and sorry if this is well-trod
 JD> ground in this echo.

actually, it hasn't really been trod on enough anywhere... it is also much 
simplier than you're thinking...

older systems that still want to talk to analogue modems simply use a shim to 
convert to telnet and a virtual modem...

in the windows world, the best and pretty inexpensive package is Mike Ehlert's 
netserial and netfoss packages... netfoss handles the FOSSIL type stuff... i 
don't recall if netserial is also needed or if they work independently... they 
can be found on many BBSes as well as Mike's PCMicro site...

in the OS/2 world, the best is still the SIO package from x00 guru Ray Gwinn...

in the linux world, most of the mailers and BBSes talk directly to the whatever 
port they are configured on... there's no virtual modem or shim needed... if 
you're running DOS doors on your native linux BBS, use DOSEMU and set all doors 
to talk to COM1... there's a setting in DOSEMU, command line i think, that 
handles the tying together of the fake comm port and the telnet, ssh, or rlogin 
ports... native synchronet and mystic both operate this way... synchronet, i 
know, offers telnet, ssh, rlogin, http, https, ftp and ftps access to it...

in today's world, the mailers operate, mostly, on their own port (24554 default 
for binkp) and so there's no real need for the old style front end mailer 
sharing the same port as the BBS... it can still be done, though... i do it 
here with my frontdoor/remoteaccess setup running on OS/2... there are not very 
many systems out there doing this so there's not much mail being transferred 
over telnet mailer connections... the majority of today's systems are using 
binkd or have a mailer that offers the binkp protocol...

i don't know if that answers your question(s) or not... hopefully it does help 
some...

)\/(ark

Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
Do you manage your own servers? If you are not running an IDS/IPS yer doin' it 
wrong...
.... You folks telling me that intolerance is a Traditional Family Value?
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