Re: Telnet and FTP to Historic

[Nick Hilliard <[e-mail]>]

Christian de Larrinaga wrote on 03/12/2020 11:13:
> there are times when having telnet to test a mail server / email address is helpful?
> 
> Happy to have a better sweetie if you can suggest one

netcat is probably better for this because it opens up a raw socket and 
doesn't attempt to cook the transport layer, like telnet.

Telnet as an interactive remote login protocol is operationally 
obsolete.  There are better alternatives and few credible reasons for 
new equipment / services to support it.  There isn't an issue for 
existing service stacks to continue to support it on a discretionary 
basis if they want.

In any event, reclassifying a protocol as historic doesn't mean that the 
tools will disappear.  It just means that as a protocol is at an 
evolutionary dead end.

It's ok to admit this sort of thing and not see it as a bad thing. The 
world moves on.

The same applies to finger except more so.  And identd (rfc1413), 
chargen (rfc864), echo/udp (rfc862) and, honestly, cartloads of the 
earlier rfcs.  If there were a gigantic bonfire of a bunch of these, I 
would be happy to supply the marshmallows.

Nick