There's also the hybrid issue, where you tunnel IP across whatever transport medium is available - there are some people doing this over telnet, and it would be a convenient way to do things like get IP service from a flat-rate dialup access provider without paying $2/hour for SLIP, etc.

Indeed. I've been threatening to do this for some time. Define a SLIP-over-Telnet protocol that encodes packets as lines of ascii characters (one packet per line). Then login to your local public UNIX system and telnet from there to a cooperative server somewhere on the net that will turn your asciified packets back into real packets and put them on the net. You'd have an IP address that belongs to the server's net. One such server, well connected to the backbone, could support quite a few users all over the world. As far as the local UNIX host is concerned, you just spend all your time telnetted to some random host on the net. Although this could easily be done in my NOS code, I haven't actually written it because a) it's an inelegant kludge, b) I have lots of other active projects, and c) I had hoped that merely the threat of doing so would shame the dialup SLIP/PPP service providers into dropping their prices more into line with what they now charge for UNIX-with-Internet-connectivity service. SLIP/PPP service should actually cost *less* than interactive service to a public UNIX system on the Internet because it uses fewer resources per unit of connect time. Phil