What is Telnet?
Telnet is a protocol for remote computing on the internet. It allows a computer to act as a remote terminal on another machine, anywhere on the internet. This means that when you telnet to a particular host and port, the remote computer (which must have a telnet server) accepts input directly from your computer (which must have a telnet client) and output for your session is directed to your screen. At cyberstation the primary means of accessing your UNIX shell account is telnet. There are many library and information resources that are accessible through telnet. CyberStation’s ftp site has several telnet clients available for download.
Telnet is a contraction of the two words Telecommunications Network, and is one of the major network protocols used on the Internet. It is one of the earliest network protocols, and one of the only original protocols still in common use on the internet. It was developed in 1969, with the RFC 15, and has evolved over the years to be a robust protocol, although with mounting security concerns it is often foregone in place of the secure SSH protocol. Unlike the graphical interfaces of the HTTP protocol, which have given us the World Wide Web, telnet is a text-based protocol. The original purpose of telnet was to have an easy interface for terminals to interact with one another, using relatively simple command structures and accessible interfaces. Although still in use, telnet is rarely used by the majority of the internet-browsing public, who instead use HTTP browsers and email clients for the majority of their connections. In the age before personal computers, anyone who wanted to use a
