Telnet
Telnet opens a plain-text TCP terminal (RFC 854) to a remote host — a router or switch console, a lab device, or a classic ANSI BBS. It runs in the very same terminal emulator as an SSH session, so it's just another tab: rename it, theme it, detach it into its own window, reconnect it. Telnet works on every platform the app runs on.
Telnet has no encryption. Everything — including anything you type at a login prompt — travels the network in clear text. Use it only on trusted networks or for gear that offers nothing better, and prefer SSH whenever it's available.
Connect
- Open Telnet from the sidebar's Other group, or the terminal tab bar's + launcher.
- Enter the
<host>(name or IP) and<port>— the default is23. - Optionally set the terminal type reported to the server (default
xterm-256color). - Connect. The session opens as a terminal tab.
There is no separate authentication step: Telnet carries no credentials of its own, so if the remote asks you to log in, you do it in-band — at its own prompt, right in the terminal.
Profiles
A host you visit often can be saved as a named profile (host + port + terminal type) and reopened in one tap. Telnet settings hold no secrets, so — like serial profiles — they live in the normal settings file, not the secure store.
BBS art & encoding
Telnet is still the front door to hundreds of bulletin-board systems, whose menus are drawn with CP437 (the IBM-PC / DOS code page): block shades ░ ▒ ▓ █ and box-drawing ═ ║ ╔ ╗. The Telnet session decodes its stream as CP437, so that art renders as intended instead of as replacement characters. Plain ASCII and ANSI colour/cursor escapes pass through unchanged.
What the app handles for you
The client speaks just enough of the Telnet option protocol to behave:
- It consumes all IAC negotiation (
WILL/WONT/DO/DONT, sub-negotiation), so raw protocol bytes never leak onto the screen. - It agrees to SGA and BINARY (8-bit clean), lets the server do the echo, and reports your terminal type and window size (NAWS) — so full-screen programs and resizing behave.
Reconnect reopens the socket to the same host and port, so after a device reboots or a BBS drops you, one click brings the session back without retyping anything. On Desktop you can also detach a Telnet tab into its own window like any other session.