On 2026-02-25 01:18, Eddie Chapman wrote:
On 24/02/2026 20:33, Solar Designer wrote:
On Tue, Feb 24, 2026 at 05:05:58AM -0500, [email protected] wrote:
Who uses telnet anyway? It's deprecated. Everyone uses ssh for any
kind of remote access.
Indeed. Yet:
Quite many people surely do still use a telnet client to access
various
older/smaller devices
Yes. I would hazard a guess that the largest cohort of devices running
a telnet server are enterprise switches, gateways & routers. So many
times over the years I've been surprised to find a switch I'm
configuring has a telnet as well as the obligatory http(s) server
available for the admin to login via.
Albeit to a lesser extent these days, and more likely BusyBox telnetd
than InetUtils. But switches are one of the most likely pieces of kit
to be forgotten about and left running for 10+ years in a closet
without a firmware update. There are a LOT of old switches running out
there.
There're also serial port concentrators, programmable automation
controllers, remote telemetry units, protocol gateways, data
aggregators, and PXI/LXI instrumentation out there that run some of
telnet daemon - and you can be sure that it's not always busybox's
telnetd implementation.
