Re: Mail and News with UUCP over TCP/IP

[Richard Kettlewell <richard@greenend.org.uk>]

>Question for Richard:  do you have to have a static IP address assigned to
>you to use UUCP over TCP/IP?

No, you don't - only the server does.  When uucico runs on the client
machine, it makes a TCP/IP connection to port 540 of the server
machine (which would normally be a machine permanently connected to
the Internet).

>From then on in, the sequence of events is the same as if it had
connected by dialing over a modem without an intervening IP stack: the
client machine logs into the server in the traditional UNIX way and
speaks a UUCP protocol over the connection.

There is a potential oddity, depending how things are set up.  With
the UUCP services run by my employer, if uucico goes in over TCP/IP,
the chat script uses only one login/password pair; whereas if it goes
in over dialup, there's two - one to authenticate to the Ascend which
actually picks up the phone, and one to authenticate to the UUCP
server machine.  The Ascend just makes a port 540 connection to the
UUCP machine, so while it looks like UUCP over dialup to the customer,
it appears to be UUCP over TCP/IP to the server.  Not that the
software cares much either way.  (This is also true of PSI UK's
service, in fact.)

-- 
Richard Kettlewell               http://www.elmail.co.uk/~richard/
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