Hi all,

one thing that fascinates me about UUCP is it's decentralized
ad-hoc, peer to peer nature. With modems and analog phone
lines being a thing of the past, what are viable options to
connect uucp nodes directly in the 21st century and what are
their requirements?

- UUCP over IP (obviously requires IP connectivity)
- GSM Network? (is anyone using this?)
- Ham Radio? (pretty sure UUCP over Ham is a thing)
- exchanging USB sticks or similar media (good ol' sneaker net)
- null modem cables (only local connections)

The last three options would be independent of intermediate
infrastructure. Though the UUCP over IP option whould of course
work in an ad hoc mesh wireless network.

Are there other options? Any experience with any of these?

Cheers,

lkh

On 24.01.2025 17:50 Uhr lkh wrote:

> one thing that fascinates me about UUCP is it's decentralized
> ad-hoc, peer to peer nature. With modems and analog phone
> lines being a thing of the past, what are viable options to
> connect uucp nodes directly in the 21st century and what are
> their requirements?
>
> - UUCP over IP (obviously requires IP connectivity)

I would recommend that. IPv6 makes it possible to reach any device.

> - GSM Network? (is anyone using this?)

I know there exist(ed) many packet services, but I doubt that this is
useful. Many ISPs discontinued some of them, most people only want IP
connectivity and phone service.

Some ISPs discontinued GSM at all.

--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1737737410muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

lkh <lkh@dwalin.uucp> writes:

> - UUCP over IP (obviously requires IP connectivity)
All but the very old UUCP packages I've seen (DECUS UUCP) will run over
TCP/IP.

> - null modem cables (only local connections)
As long as you can get a login prompt. There's a project, tty0tty. This
makes a virtual null modem cable on Linux. Using this, you can connect a
system that doesn't use IP UUCP to one that does, running under
emulation, allowing that machine to be reachable by the others.

; vax8650.ini:
; Linux (agetty) listens via /dev/tnt0, VMS (simh) grabs /dev/tnt1.
; This is for VMS to dial into Linux.
; Linux can dial in via /dev/tnt2, into VMS /dev/tnt3.
; DECUS UUCP uses TXA0 to call *into* Linux.
; Taylor UUCP (from Linux) calls *out* and connects to TXA1
; Non-UUCP logins work as well, providing they are on the correct port.
set vh dhu,enable
att vh line=0,connect=/dev/tnt1
att vh line=1,connect=/dev/tnt3

$ show queue /batch
Batch queue SYS$BATCH, idle, on KIRIN::

Batch queue UUCP_BATCH, available, on KIRIN::
<UUCP Daemons and Administrative Processing>

You can probably also tether a smartphone, and use that like you'd have
used a modem before. I've not run UUCP over it, but I have used it to
dial into places. Should the internet go down, you could still connect
one system to another using that.

--
PGP Key ID: 781C A3E2 C6ED 70A6 B356 7AF5 B510 542E D460 5CAE
"The Internet should always be the Wild West!"

On 1/24/25 10:50, lkh wrote:
> Hi all,

Hi,

> one thing that fascinates me about UUCP is it's decentralized ad-hoc,
> peer to peer nature.

I don't think either decentralization nor ad-hoc are an inherent
property of UUCP.

Sure, UUCP can be used in those ways. But UUCP can also be used in a
largely centralized way. Just look at some of the old UUCP systems that
used to have MANY systems connecting to them from all over the place.
Many such central UUCP nodes became "if you can get to there, it knows
how to get to me." That seems fairly centralized to me.

> With modems and analog phone lines being a thing of the past, what
> are viable options to connect uucp nodes directly in the 21st century
> and what are their requirements?
>
> - UUCP over IP (obviously requires IP connectivity)

Neither IP nor real-time bidirectional communications are required for
UUCP to function.

You can have UUCP store messages in -- what I understand to be called --
a "bag file" which is transmitted and ultimately accepted by the
receiving side.

You could transmit the bag files into a newsgroup and allow Usenet to
transport the messages between sending and receiving systems.

Yes, I see the irony in using Usenet to transport UUCP bag files when
UUCP used to be used to transport Usenet.

> - GSM Network? (is anyone using this?)

My naive understanding is that all commercial providers have stopped
supporting GSM service. So that probably means that only hobbyists /
freakers / hackers that are using GSM.

> - Ham Radio? (pretty sure UUCP over Ham is a thing)

I suppose if you use packet, technically you can probably send just
about anything you want. What you're licensed to send is probably a
different story.

> - exchanging USB sticks or similar media (good ol' sneaker net)

This is a variant of a UUCP bag file.

> - null modem cables (only local connections)

IRda comes to mind too.

> The last three options would be independent of intermediate
> infrastructure. Though the UUCP over IP option whould of course work
> in an ad hoc mesh wireless network.

I don't think I'd choose to use UUCP over IP directly. Instead I'd do
UUCP over SSH over IP.

> Are there other options? Any experience with any of these?

I have used UUCP over SSH over IP a few times in the past. SSH is used
as the transport for the UUCP character stream via STDIN & STDOUT. It
doesn't involve any port forwarding.

--
Grant. . . .