History of Telnet

Telnet was and is the way of connectiong to computers on the Internet. Before the World Wide Web made graphical access to the Internet possible, computers on the Internet understood only typed commands very much like DOS.

The development over the years using the Telnet service with a bit of history. The Telnet protocol was first defined by Postel in 1980. You may cross reference at Http://sunsite.auc.dk/RFC/rfc/rfc764.html. In RFC 764, Postal Wrote

The purpose of the Telnet protocol is to provide a fairly general, bi-directional, eight-bit byte oriented communications facility. Its primary goal is to allow a standard method of interfacing terminal devices and terminal-oriented processes to each other. It is envisioned that the protocol may also be used for terminal-terminal communication ("linking") and process-process communication (distributed computation).

Telnet is designed to allow a user to log in to a foreign machine and execute commands there. Telnet works as though you are at the console of the remote machine, as if you physically approached the remote machine, tuned it on, and began working on it

Now that the World Wide Web has become the preferred way to access most resources, Telnet is seldom used, Except for special applications system administration. And to access archaic systems.

It was also originally designed to access information from libraries and is still today.

Other uses are_

• connecting to a system to use specific programs such as electronic mail and statistics programs,

• connecting to a library to search that library's collection,

• connecting to an on-line database of information,

• connecting to a MOO or MUSH environment to interact and communicate with other users.

Telnet, which stands for Telecommunications Network, is a protocol that provides a way for users (or clients) to connect to multiuser computers (or servers) on the Internet, whether in the next building or across the other side of the world. In most cases, users use Telnet to communicate with a remote login service. More information can be referenced at

Bibliography of the Internet.