Protocol type: PPP or Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP)

PPP replaces Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP) as the protocol of choice for point-to-point connections.

PPP enables interoperability among the remote access software of different manufacturers. PPP also enables multiple network communication protocols to use the same physical communication line.

The SLIP Request for Comment (RFC) never becomes an Internet standard because of the following deficiencies:

  • SLIP has no standard way to define IP addressing between the two hosts. This means that an unnumbered net cannot be used.
  • SLIP has no support for error detection or error compression. Error detection or error compression is implemented in PPP.
  • SLIP has no support for system authentication, while PPP has two-way authentication.

SLIP is still used today, and it is supported on the IBM® i operating system. However, IBM suggests that you use PPP when setting up point-to-point connectivity. SLIP provides no support for multilink connections. Compared to SLIP, PPP has better authentication. PPP performs better because of its compression facilities.

Note: SLIP connection profiles that are defined with ASYNC line types are no longer supported in this release. If you have these connection profiles, you must migrate them to either a SLIP profile or a PPP profile that uses a PPP line type.