Re: GNOME and PPP - suggestions for way forward

[Dax Kelson <dkelson inconnect com>]

James Green said once upon a time (Sat, 29 May 1999):

> I think basing it on the Windows DUN version for a start would be good.
> Does anyone know if you can periodically get pppd to tell you the current
> connect speed? A negotiation speed of 52k will often drop to 50k to 58k
> during the call remember. Such a detail would be good.

Such meta information is unavailable to pppd (or any PPP software on any
platform).  You can't get that info out-of-band, only in-band.  To get
such info you would have to send your modem the break sequence, give it
the right AT command (specific to each modem), parse the output and then
tell it to resume the connection.  Needless to say, you couldn't pass
traffic over the modem while this was happening.

Some external modems provide "meta" info with different tone beeps for
uptrain/downtrains and some even have LCDs to display the current speed.

Dax Kelson