Serial Line Interface Protocal

The SLIP protocol defines two special characters: END and ESC. END is octal 300 (decimal 192) and ESC is octal 333 (decimal 219) not to be confused with the ASCII ESCape character; for the purposes of this discussion, ESC will indicate the SLIP ESC character. To send a packet, a SLIP host simply starts sending the data in the packet. If a data byte is the same code as END character, a two byte sequence of ESC and octal 334 (decimal 220) is sent instead. If it the same as an ESC character, an two byte sequence of ESC and octal 335 (decimal 221) is sent instead. When the last byte in the packet has been sent, an END character is then transmitted.

Phil Karn suggests a simple change to the algorithm, which is to begin as well as end packets with an END character. This will flush any erroneous bytes which have been caused by line noise. In the normal case, the receiver will simply see two back-to-back END characters, which will generate a bad IP packet. If the SLIP implementation does not throw away the zero-length IP packet, the IP implementation certainly will. If there was line noise, the data received due to it will be discarded without affecting the following packet.

see also:

• http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1055.html

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