What is Telnet?

What is Telnet?

Telnet is an old computer protocol (set of programmatic rules). Telnet is famous for being the original Internet when the Net first launched in 1969. Telnet stands for 'telecommunications network', and was built to be form of remote control to manage mainframe computers from distant terminals. In those original days of large mainframe computers, telnet enabled research students and professors to 'log in' to the university mainframe from any terminal in the building.

This remote login saved researchers hours of walking each semester. While telnet pales in comparison to modern networking technology, it was revolutionary in 1969, and telnet helped pave the way for the eventual World Wide Web in 1989. While telnet technology is very old, it is still in some use today by purists. Telnet has evolved into a new modern version of remote control called 'SSH', something that many modern network administrators use today to manage linux and unix computers from a distance.

Telnet is a text-based computer protocol. Unlike Firefox or Google Chrome screens, telnet screens are very dull to look at. Very different from Web pages that sport fancy images, animation, and hyperlinks, telnet is about typing on a keyboard. Telnet commands can be rather cryptic commands, with example commands being 'z' and 'prompt% fg'. Most modern users would find telnet screens to be very archaic and slow.

Executing Telnet Commands in Windows

Telnet commands are very easy to execute. After opening command prompt, just type out and enter the word telnet. The result is a line that says "Microsoft Telnet>", which is where Telnet commands are entered.

Even easier, especially if you don't plan on following up your first Telnet command with a number of additional ones, you can just follow any Telnet command with the word telnet, like you'll see in most of my examples below.

To connect to a Telnet server, you need to enter a command that follows like this:telnet hostname port. One example would be launching Command Prompt and executing telnet textmmode.com 23. This would connect you to textmmode.comon port 23 using Telnet.

Note: The last portion of the command is used for the Telnet port number but is only necessary to specify if it's not the default port of 23. For example, entering telnettextmmode.com 23 is the same as running the command telnet textmmode.com, but not the same as telnet textmmode.com 95, which would connect to that same server but this time on port number 95.

Microsoft keeps this list of Telnet commands if you'd like to learn more about how to do things like open and close a Telnet connection, display the Telnet Client settings, etc.