networking geek question - skuzzy or anyone?

[eagl]

Does anyone remember the name of that old unix/linux utility that would let you use an old-school unix shell dialup account and fake a tcp-ip connection over the dialup?  Basically you would dial up to the host which got you to a shell, then run the utility both on the PC and the computer with the shell account.  It would create virtual network interfaces on both the pc and shell host computer, translate the tcp-ip packets to ASCII characters, which were then sent over the dialup link.  It was a total hack but it worked GREAT to give your PC a full-up tcp-ip connection when all you had available was a dialup shell account available.

But I can't remember the name of the utility and nobody uses or needs it anymore.  Except that it would still totally work in some cases where it's the only way to get network access and could probably be modified to use java and work on a web server over port 80 to create a second network connection.

Anyhow, does anyone remember that utility and remember what it was named?  I really want to find it for a future project of mine after I retire from my current job.

[Maniac]

Didnt regular dialup modems work this way? in the 9,6 14.4 baud days? you dialed up to the provider and then you got the shell, something with you wrote something like ppp or ptp or something and you where on your way surfing.

[eagl]

Maybe some worked that way...  This was probably before that (early-mid 1990s) and worked with shell-only systems and linux, possibly windows too.  It took text-only dialup and translated the packets to ASCII.  The utility monitored the serial port terminal application on the PC, converted the ASCII back to packets, and sent them to the networking stack.  Networking requests on that network device would go to the utility for translation to ASCII and then streamed back to the serial port.  On the shell server side with the real network connection, the utility would basically do the same thing, sending bits directly to open ports and intercepting inbounds on those ports sort of like a very stripped down NAT device.

It was all very nifty and probably one of the simplest (and stealthiest) ways to encapsulate tcp-ip to tunnel through any firewall on any port that happened to be open.  I bet a smart programmer could re-write it in javascript and hang it on a website, providing a whole second network connection hidden within port 80 traffic, using the web server as a full-up network proxy server for unrestricted network access, all over port 80.

Windows and internet explorer sandboxing may make it hard to actually USE such a virtual network connection, but less secure apps and operating systems shouldn't have any problems redirecting the input/output to and from applications through this virtual network driver.  Nobody dials directly into modem banks for unix shell access anymore, but it would be just as fun and a lot faster than tcp-ip over email or tcp-ip over carrier pigeon.

[Auger]

Are you referring to 'tip'?  I seem to remeber using it with a pipe to another command back in the Confirmed Kill days.  A Google search didn't return anything useful.

[eagl]

Are you referring to 'tip'?  I seem to remeber using it with a pipe to another command back in the Confirmed Kill days.  A Google search didn't return anything useful.

Not tip, although I do seem to remember establishing the connection by piping the selected port to the utility and then back out to the outbound port, or something like that.

[eagl]

I think I found it, not sure though.  I was looking for dialup tcp-ip, and got on the track of SLIP, CSLIP, etc.  But all of those required administrator or kernel support.  Then I found a reference to a utility called "term" which can be run by the user.  Looking at the term howto, I think this may be either the utility I was using, or something very similar, or I used term in conjunction with another utility to make it even more transparent once the link is set up and running.

So...  Term.  Maybe.

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/archive/Term-HOWTO