Mpd-4.2 released.

[Alexander Motin]

Julian Elischer wrote:
> There has been some talk about whether mpd should be put in the base 
> system to replace our 3 other ppp implementations. I guess one step 
> would be to see what the usage cases would be for replacing if_ppp and 
> sppp and a first step
> would be to see how many users of these there are.

As I see situation now:
  ppp - good user-level implementation. Not very fast, but stable, 
flexible and able to be used with other programs like pppoed.
  pppd - outdated many years. In theory can be fast with modem links, 
but who need them now? If used with other programs like poptop will 
loose it's performance to ppp level due to context switches.
  sppp - outdated too, but I have never used it. Is there anything 
except ISDN using it? In my country ISDN is mostly out of use now.
  mpd - very fast and functional solution. But it is a daemon with 
limited abilities to be used by other software like getty or some 
wrappers like pppoed for ppp or GUIs like kppp.

> Brian talked a bit about this at the last DevSummit.. It just needs someone
> with the time and knowledge. Possibly Brian could work with Alex to make 
> sure that
> all the functionality of ppp is in mpd. He did say that teh command 
> language would need
> looking at to ensure that people would have a chance to convert their 
> scripts..

Mpd uses command language different from all others, but I think it is 
not a big problem. If we would compare supported PPP extensions then I 
think mpd will now win in most nominations.

The main problem I think is a general usage differences. Mpd was planned 
and implemented as daemon. It have very limited foreground operation and 
integration abilities. pppd as example is able to be called from getty 
and terminate after link disconnect, while mpd does not. sppp is somehow 
used by i4b project, but I know nothing about it.

If somebody could help me to make list of reasonable requirements and/or 
wanted usage examples then I surely will try to implement missing parts.

-- 
Alexander Motin