SLIP, Serial Line Internet Protocol

SLIP is an encapsulation of IP (Internet Protocol) designed to enable connections over serial ports and modems. On most personal computers, it has been replaced with PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol). The engineering of PPP is of better quality than SLIP, and includes many more features. It also does not require IP address configuration before being fully established. SLIP is still a preferred method of encapsulation on micro-controllers due to a much lighter overhead. SLIP is able to modify a standard internet datagram by allowing them to be separated. It does not have error detection capability, as it is more dependent on higher-layer protocol for that purpose. Because of this, SLIP often fails to be an effective protocol as dial-up connections are typically prone to connection errors. A variant of SLIP is also being used in BlueCore Serial Protocol, a communication method that connects Bluetooth devices and host computers. CSLIP is a version that uses header compression.