Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!MSU.BITNET!08071TCP
From: 08071TCP@MSU.BITNET (Doug Nelson)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: telnet...
Message-ID: <8807072010.AA28332@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 7 Jul 88 15:08:37 GMT
References: 
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 30

Since Bill Westfield asked for flames:     :-)

>I really wish telnet had a "DON'T TELNET-ANYMORE" option.  Most telnet
>server/client interactions happen at connection startup, and then they
>stay the same until the connection closed.  Unfortunately, since telnet
>options can occur anywhere within the data stream, both telnet processes
>have to carefully examine every character to see whether it might be an
>IAC.  I wish a host could set the connection up the way that it wanted,
>and then say "that's it, no more telnet negotiations from me".  (Of course,
>this would make the most sense in binary mode, so that you would not have
>to worry about end-of-line nonsense either.)
>
>Any comments?

Why use Telnet if you don't want it?  It certainly isn't that difficult
to keep scanning for IAC, and Telnet is certainly not a very complex
protocol.  And you always have the option of rejecting any changes in
options if you don't want to deal with them.

In what circumstances would you want to use this feature?  In a general
interactive environment, it would seem like you'd want to keep your
options open.

What concerns me, though, is that some Telnet implementations apparently
assume that no more options will be negotiated after the startup, and then
stop working when they encounter software that sends them, such as echo
toggles for password suppression.

Doug Nelson
Michigan State University
Computer Lab