Package: diald (0.16.4-7)

dial on demand daemon for PPP and SLIP.

Many sites use SLIP or PPP links to connect to other sites over phone lines. Normally these links must be explicitly turned on or off. diald can be used to bring a SLIP or PPP link up when there are Internet packets to be sent to another site, and to close the link down when it is idle.

diald operates by starting a SLIP link on a pseudo tty and setting up a route to the resulting interface. This interface is called the proxy. diald monitors the proxy to determine when to bring up a real communications link. When a real link is up diald routes packets from the proxy to the real link and monitors the real link to decide if it needs to be shut down. As well, if the link goes down unexpectedly diald will attempt to reestablish the link. The rules for controlling these operations are extensively configurable in run time startup files.

For diald to work the kernel *must* have SLIP devices, either compiled in or as a module, even if only PPP connections are made. In the latter case you should also have pppd, of course.

Diald needs a program like "chat" or "expect" to actually dial. Sorry, "dip" cannot be used.