Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!ucsd!ucbvax!PANDA.PANDA.COM!MRC
From: MRC@PANDA.PANDA.COM (Mark Crispin)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: telnet...
Message-ID: <12412329728.8.MRC@PANDA.PANDA.COM>
Date: 7 Jul 88 06:43:36 GMT
References: <8807061753.AA07059@TOTO.MIT.EDU>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 13

The performance problem you refer to (2 process switches/character) is
an artifact of the design of the Telnet server and operating system and
not a problem in the Telnet protocol itself.

In WAITS, Tenex, and TOPS-20, the Telnet server is in the same context
as the terminal driver (that is, it is part of the operating system).
A Telnet terminal is a special type of software terminal.  It is not a
pseudo-terminal because there is no controlling job.  It's more like a
physical terminal, but instead of the characters coming from a hardware
RS232 line scanner they're coming from the TCP/IP driver.

I believe a similar design is used by Unix; I don't believe Unix has a
Telnet server running at process level.
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