From: Marc Horowitz <marc@Athena.MIT.EDU>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 93 22:58:53 PST
To: david.brooks@cutting.hou.tx.us (David Brooks)
Subject: Re: PGP on BBS
In-Reply-To: <10497.143.uupcb@cutting.hou.tx.us>
Message-ID: <9301240657.AA14069@m16-034-15.MIT.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


What you are all talking about here is a solved problem.  Many such
network protocols exist.  SLIP is probably the best example.  If you
use SLIP to connect to the BBS instead of a dumb terminal connection,
you get a real network link which supports multiple connections to
multiple destinations.  And free SLIP implementations exist.  The
author of one of the most popular is on this list, in fact.

Of course, this requires that your "terminal" be somewhat intelligent,
but even a lowly 8088 PC running DOS can run SLIP.

If you do this, all you need is a BBS which supports network services,
instead of the current menu-based sort of systems we have now.  If you
want to encrypt, you do so locally.  In fact, you'd probably do almost
everything locally.

		Marc