Telnet enables remote login by translating characters between a local terminal and a remote system. It uses TCP port 23 to establish a connection and embed control characters in the data stream. Options and suboptions can be negotiated to enable extra features, and different modes of operation process login and data transmission differently. However, Telnet suffers from a lack of security as login credentials can be easily captured over the network.
Telnet enables remote login by translating characters between a local terminal and a remote system. It uses TCP port 23 to establish a connection and embed control characters in the data stream. Options and suboptions can be negotiated to enable extra features, and different modes of operation process login and data transmission differently. However, Telnet suffers from a lack of security as login credentials can be easily captured over the network.
Telnet enables remote login by translating characters between a local terminal and a remote system. It uses TCP port 23 to establish a connection and embed control characters in the data stream. Options and suboptions can be negotiated to enable extra features, and different modes of operation process login and data transmission differently. However, Telnet suffers from a lack of security as login credentials can be easily captured over the network.
Telnet enables remote login by translating characters between a local terminal and a remote system. It uses TCP port 23 to establish a connection and embed control characters in the data stream. Options and suboptions can be negotiated to enable extra features, and different modes of operation process login and data transmission differently. However, Telnet suffers from a lack of security as login credentials can be easily captured over the network.
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Remote Login:
Telnet Objectives Upon completion you will be able to:
• Understand how TELNET works
• Understand the role of NVT in a TELNET communication • Understand TELNET option and suboption negotiation • Know how control characters are used • Know the TELNET modes of operation
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18.1 CONCEPT TELNET enables the establishment of a connection to a remote system in such a way that the local terminal appears to be a terminal at the remote system.
Telnet is a general-purpose client-server application.
The topics discussed in this section include:
Time-Sharing Environment Login
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Figure 18.1 Local login
When the terminal
and OS are in the same locale
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Figure 18.2 Remote login
Via a universal interface called the Network Virtual Terminal (NVT) character set, the TELNET client translates characters (data or commands) that come from the local terminal into NVT form and delivers them to the network. The TELNET server translates data and commands from NVT form into the form acceptable by the remote computer. TCP/IP Protocol Suite 4 Figure 18.3 Concept of NVT
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18.3 NVT CHARACTER SET NVT uses two sets of characters, one for data and one for control. Both are 8-bit bytes.
The topics discussed in this section include:
Data Characters Control Characters
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Figure 18.4 Format of data and control characters
Format for data characters – essentially 7-bit ASCII
Format for control characters
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Table 18.1 Some NVT control characters
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18.4 EMBEDDING TELNET uses only one TCP connection over well-known port number 23.
This one connection is used for sending both data and control characters. TELNET accomplishes this by embedding the control characters in the data stream.
To separate control characters from data characters, each control
character is prefaced with the IAC control character.
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Figure 18.6 An example of embedding
IAC means the next character is a control character.
EC means backspace one character.
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18.5 OPTIONS TELNET lets the client and server negotiate options before or during the use of the service. Options are extra features available to a user with a more sophisticated terminal.
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Table 18.2 Options
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18.6 OPTION NEGOTIATION To use any of the options first requires option negotiation between the client and the server. Four control characters are used for this purpose.
The topics discussed in this section include:
Enabling an Option Disabling an Option Symmetry
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Table 18.3 NVT character set for option negotiation
Some options can only be enabled by the server, some only by the client, and some by both. TCP/IP Protocol Suite 14 Figure 18.7 Offer to enable an option
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Figure 18.8 Request to enable an option
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Figure 18.9 Offer to disable an option
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Figure 18.10 Request to disable an option
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Example 1
Figure 18.11 shows an example of option negotiation. In this
example, the client wants the server to echo each character sent to the server. In other words, when a character is typed at the user keyboard terminal, it goes to the server and is sent back to the screen of the user before being processed. The echo option is enabled by the server because it is the server that sends the characters back to the user terminal. Therefore, the client should request from the server the enabling of the option using DO. The request consists of three characters: IAC, DO, and ECHO. The server accepts the request and enables the option. It informs the client by sending the three character approval: IAC, WILL, and ECHO.
See Next Slide
TCP/IP Protocol Suite 19 Figure 18.11 Example 1: Echo option
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18.7 SUBOPTION NEGOTIATION Some options require additional information. The client and server agree through a process called suboption negotiation.
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Table 18.4 NVT character set for suboption negotiation
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Figure 18.12 Example of suboption negotiation
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18.8 CONTROLLING THE SERVER Control characters can be used to control the remote server.
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Table 18.5 Characters used to control the application program running on remote server
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Figure 18.13 Example of interrupting an application program
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18.9 OUT-OF-BAND SIGNALING To make control characters effective in special situations, TELNET uses out-of-band signaling, a technique in which the control characters are preceded by IAC and are sent out of order to the remote process.
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Figure 18.14 Out-of-band signaling
Imagine a pgm running on the server is in an infinite loop and does
not accept any more input data. You want to interrupt the server, but the server is not reading any data from the client.
Client sends an urgent pointer called the Data Mark inside a TCP segment with the urgent pointer set.
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18.10 ESCAPE CHARACTER When a user wants characters interpreted by the client instead of sending them over the connection to the server, he can use an escape character, normally Ctrl+] (shown as ^]).
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Figure 18.15 Two different interruptions
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18.11 MODE OF OPERATION Most TELNET implementations operate in one of three modes: default mode, character mode, or line mode.
The topics discussed in this section include:
Default Mode Character Mode Line Mode
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Example 2
In this example, we use the default mode to show the concept
and its deficiencies even though it is almost obsolete today. The client and the server negotiate the terminal type and terminal speed and then the server checks the login and password of the user (see Figure 18.16).
See Next Slide
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Figure 18.16 Example 2
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Example 3
In this example, we show how the client switches to the
character mode. This requires that the client request the server to enable the SUPPRESS GO AHEAD and ECHO options (see Figure 18.17).
See Next Slide
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Figure 18.17 Example 3 – Character Mode
Note: ONE character per packet!! ouch
In the newer line mode, the client collects and edits the data then sends an entire line in one packet.
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18.12 USER INTERFACE The operating system (UNIX, for example) defines an interface to TELNET with user-friendly commands. The interface is responsible for translating the user-friendly commands to the TELNET commands.
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Table 18.6 Examples of interface commands
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18.13 SECURITY ISSUE TELNET suffers from security problems. TELNET requires a login name and password (when exchanging text). A microcomputer connected to a broadcast LAN can easily eavesdrop using snooper software to capture a login name and the corresponding password (even if it is encrypted).
