Remote Access: Dynamic IP Address Assignment Available for SLIP & PPP

To meet the growing demand for Remote Access services, CIT has added support for dynamic IP address assignment for SLIP and PPP users.

In the past, every time you established a SLIP or PPP connection, your connection was assigned the same IP address. This address was the same one that CIT assigned to your Remote Access account.

Because the number of IP addresses we can assign for Remote Access accounts is limited, and because we would like to offer some SLIP and PPP services to customers without requiring a Remote Access account, we have added support for dynamic IP address assignment.

When using dynamic IP address assignment, you may be assigned a different IP address each time you establish a SLIP or PPP connection.

Customers already using our SLIP and PPP service who need to continue using a static IP address (now called a "personal IP address") will be able to continue to do so. We encourage any existing SLIP or PPP customer who does not need to use a personal IP adddress to migrate to using dynamic IP address assignment.

New remote access users should use dynamic IP address assignment.

Old Users: Should I Switch to a Dynamic IP Address?

We recommend that most existing SLIP and PPP customers currently using personal IP addresses migrate to using dynamic IP addresses.

You will not be able to migrate to a dynamic IP address if your computer is running software that expects to be using the same IP address all the time. For example, if you run a Web server on your computer (which would be rare for a device attached via SLIP or PPP), you will need to continue to use a personal IP address. Note that simply using a Web browser is not the same as running a Web server, and would not require using a personal IP address.

Old Users: Migrating to a Dynamic IP Address

Macintosh

If you are using MacSLIP on a Mac, upgrade to MacSLIP Comserv Script version 1.5 or later. Starting in version 1.5 of this script, dynamic IP address assignment became the default behavior (but personal IP addressing is still possible).

PC

No instructions have been published yet. However, the current version of the software CIT distributes for MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95 users has been revised to use dynamic addressing. (Information about how to determine if your version predates this revision is not available.)

Other

To switch to dynamic IP address assignment, change your login sequence to look like the following:

  Username:   username
  Password:   secret
  (possibly some announcements and such)
  comserv>    slip default

(If you are using ppp, then say ppp default instead of slip default.)

At this point the Remote Access server will print a message specifying the dynamic IP address assigned to you, as well as the MTU, and it starts SLIP (or PPP) service (IP). You should now start SLIP (or PPP) service on your end.

New Users: Choose Dynamic Addressing

Anyone who starts using Remote Access services on or after April 23 1996 should normally use dynamic IP addressing, not personal IP address assignment. Current versions of software being distributed by CIT support dynamic IP address assignment.