InJoy v1.1 - by Chris Wenham

nJoy is an Internet dialer that's gleefully easy to set up and use. It replaces the standard 'Dial Other Internet Providers' program that comes with Warp's Internet Access Kit, offering auto-learning scripts to let novice users get going right off the bat, and advanced PPP tuning options for the power user to squeeze as much speed out of a dialup line as possible.

Installation

Installing InJoy is a matter of creating a directory and unzipping the distribution file's contents into it, then running a REXX script that will create a folder and program icons on your Desktop.

Configuration

Configuration of InJoy is where the program shines and offers the most features. Most of the time you'll only need to enter the basics such as phone numbers, login names, passwords and applicable hostmasks and DNS entries. InJoy lets you set up multiple Host profiles just like IBM's D.O.I.P. program does, making it possible to choose from more than one service provider.

Hit the "PPP Options" button and you can start dipping into the nitty gritty of connection parameters and optimizations. InJoy lets you toggle several compression options on or off as well as providing access to change MRU and Restart Timer settings. If you're confused, you can pick from "Make Fast", "Make Slow" and "Default" buttons to instantly load different speed profiles. Depending on the performance and capabilities of your ISP, as well as the condition of your phone line, you can just hit "Make Fast" and know InJoy is making the most efficient use of the line possible. If you're having problems you can 'ease up' on the Restart Timer numbers and other options until you get a working solution.

In my testing I found that the values set by "Make Fast" were too much for my ISP/Phone line to handle; lowering some of the settings gave a more reliable connection.

Auto Learning Scripts

IBM's D.O.I.P. never had a feature that would automatically learn how to login to your ISP and start a PPP session, and thus it became a necessary chore to either write a script from scratch or find a 'close enough' one and modify it for your particular ISP. InJoy fixes this beautifully. When first setting up your host you can let InJoy dial it and watch you as you manually login. Then all subsequent times that InJoy dials that host it will use the script it learned to log in for you. The scripts themselves are still editable and you can replace your login and password with %LOGIN and %PASSWORD variables for added security.

When we tried it, the Autolearn feature worked flawlessly. No editing of the script was necessary.

CPS Rates

InJoy keeps a real-time account of your overall CPS rates, keeping track of session statistics (GIF, 18.3k) like total bytes sent, total received, CPS sending, CPS receiving, average CPS and highest CPS. There's even a small bar graph that'll display the current line usage.

Unfortunately the Internet isn't the most constant of all networks and the CPS rate can often swing wildly back and forth as chunks of data squeeze through. Still, it's infinitely useful if you have an internal modem and need some kind of replacement for the lights that tell you if the connection is alive or dead, doing something or stuck.

In addition, InJoy can keep a log of your monthly connect time. With it, you can see how much time you've been spending on the Internet for each day or month, along with connect and disconnect times.

Ticker

Toggle this feature on and InJoy will periodically check the author's server for news, announcements and commercials which will then either scroll by in the main window or can be displayed on a graphical (PM) ticker you keep on your Desktop. Several companies have already begun posting announcements and advertisements this way. I had a number of problems with this feature though: for one, the textual ticker isn't very useful when you want to select URLs for browsing -- you need to be running the dialer in a window, and if the URL is broken by word wrapping you'll have to fix it yourself. Secondly, sometimes the PM ticker doesn't start up at all.

Masquerading and Dial-On-Demand

But perhaps the best "power user" features of InJoy are the IP Masquerading and Dial-On-Demand capabilities. IP Masquerading, as described in an earlier e-Zine! article, allows you to share a single dialup connection on a LAN. With this you could wire your whole office up to the Internet using only one phone line. And as the Dial-On-Demand feature suggests, this line may not even have to be a dedicated one.

Dial-On-Demand is pretty self-explanatory. Available only in the 'Pro' version, InJoy can disconnect from the Internet and wait until one of your applications, such as an e-mail program or browser, tries to open a socket. While the application is waiting InJoy will automatically dial back into your ISP and establish a connection. This can be useful in the office scenario described above, or for automated programs that connect to the Internet on an irregular basis, such as the Bovine RC5 client.

Conclusion

Even though InJoy is a character-mode program, you soon come to realize that it doesn't really matter, and that its features make that detail a trivial one. All PM Internet applications work transparently with it, some even showing better performance thanks to InJoy's optimizations.

InJoy v1.1

by F/X Communications
download from BMT Micro (ZIP, 604k)
Registration: US$20 (basic); US$35 (extended)

Chris Wenham is a freelance web designer, writer and Englishman who now lives in Endicott, NY. In the past he has written comedy, sci-fi, Pascal, REXX, HTML and Gibberish. He has been using OS/2 exclusively for the past 2 years.