How to Use Telnet on a Windows Computer

How to Use Telnet on a Windows Computer

Telnet is great little program for doing a couple of interesting things. In fact, if you want to call yourself a hacker, you absolutely MUST be able to telnet! In this lesson you will find out a few of the cool things a hacker can do with telnet. If you are using Win95, you can find telnet in the c:\windows directory, and on NT, in the c:\winnt\system32 directory.
There isn't a lot of online help concerning the usage of the program, so my goal is to provide some information for new users. First off, telnet isn't so much an application as it is a protocol. Telnet is protocol that runs over TCP/IP, and was used for connecting to remote computers. It provides a login interface, and you can run command-line programs by typing the commands on your keyboard, and the programs use the resources of the remote machine.

The results are displayed in the terminal window on your machine, but the memory and CPU cycles consumed by the program are located on the remote machine. Therefore, telnet functions as a terminal emulation program, emulating a terminal on the remote machine. Now, telnet runs on your Win95 box as a GUI application...that is to say that you can type "telnet" at the command prompt (in Windows 95 this is the MS-DOS prompt), and assuming that your PATH is set correctly, a window titled "telnet" will open. This differs from your ftp program in that all commands are entered in the DOS window. Let's begin by opening telnet. Simply open a DOS window by clicking "start", then "programs", then "MS-DOS", and at the command prompt, type: c:\telnet The window for telnet will open, and you can browse the features of the program from the menu bar.