[NCLUG] telnet on the web?

[J. Paul Reed]

On Tue, 18 Jun 2002, Andrew Fox wrote:

> This may be a stupid question but thought id ask anyway.  Is there a
> website that with a built in java or gui telnet program so that you can
> telnet to a machine via an internet browser instead of using a telnet
> program running on your computer?

Telnet == EVIL.

In the past, I've used AppGate's Mindterm, although it doesn't look like
you can use the free version off their webpage anymore
(http://www.appgate.com/ag.asp?template=products&level1=product_mindterm).

If you search google for "java ssh client", you'll get lots of useful
results in the first 10 hits; one of them is bound to work for you.

> If its not out there (i did some surfing already and nothing came up) is
> it possible?

Yes... and a bunch of people have done it.

The only icky thing is that you'll need a relatively new browser to make
sure things won't crash; Netscape 4.x on anything other than Windows will
probably crash, and IE older than 5 will probably crash. Mozilla may or may
not crash. The nature of the application requires that it use just about
every feature of the JVM, and sometimes, every feature isn't as well tested
as it should be. :-)

> This would be useful to me and others when we use the rare computer that
> does not have telnet software installed or more likely it has been
> disabled because it is some public use computer.

If that is the case, often times Java will be disabled as well (or, at
least, that's what I've found).

In the ITS labs at Poly, I'll often download PuTTY
(http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/) if I'm stuck on a
Windows box and I need to get some real work done.

> Also useful for macs that often don't have the ncsa telnet software
> installed.

For Macs, I use NiftyTelnet, with SSH support:

http://www.lysator.liu.se/~jonasw/freeware/niftyssh/

If you didn't get the motif here, it's: USE SSH WHENEVER YOU CAN! :-)

Later,
Paul
    --------------------------------------------------------------------
    J. Paul Reed              preed at sigkill.com || web.sigkill.com/preed
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