Who needs approval?



Though not necessarily physically required, getting your network administrator's permission to setup a SLIP server is a very good idea.

Assuming you know something about networking, have the required hardware and software, and can follow instructions, you shouldn't need any help from the network administrator...which is good, since they're usually pretty busy people. However, setting up a SLIP server:

  1. opens your local network to the outside world
  2. requires an additional IP address
Your network administrator may or may not care about the security implications of a SLIP server, but (s)he will care very much if you steal an IP address that you thought was "available", but really wasn't. Using an address already assigned to another system, or a "free" address that eventually gets assigned to a system, will cause you and the address's real owner alot of trouble. At seemingly random times, connectivity for either party may be interrupted. When this happens, the real owner of the address will undoubtedly complain, and the network admin should have little difficulty in tracing the problem to your rogue SLIP server. This is not a great way to win friends...but a very good way to get your ethernet cut off.