Re: how to connect UUCP nodes in the 21st century?

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. . . .