TELNET behavior poll results

Lee Chastain <lee@huachuca-jitcosi.army.mil> Thu, 01 December 1994 15:41 UTC

Date: Thu, 01 Dec 1994 08:27:53 -0700
Sender: ietf-archive-request@IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US
From: Lee Chastain <lee@huachuca-jitcosi.army.mil>
Message-Id: <9412011527.AA01740@huachuca-jitcosi.army.mil>
To: telnet-ietf@cray.com
Subject: TELNET behavior poll results
Cc: iptp@huachuca-jitcosi.army.mil
Content-Length: 1387

Below are the results of my poll, as promised.  Our validation of the 
tester has shown it to be so bad that it just can't be used at all, and
we're sending it back to the drawing board.  One of the recommendations
will be that they use the proper well-known ports when testing FTP, 
SMTP, and TELNET.



The question boils down to this:  Is a TELNET user only a proper implementation
of TELNET when the server port is 23?         ^^^^

The consequences are as follows:

1.  No - TELNET is TELNET regardless of the server port :
    Then any implementation which defaults to LF as a newline (such as
    unix-based hosts) is not conformant to the TELNET standard.
    (Possible interoperability problems).

2.  Yes - TELNET is only TELNET when the server port is 23:
    Not only did the tester send the wrong character(s), but its testing
    methodology is seriously flawed; the use of the non-standard port
    means that it is not truly testing TELNET, whether it had sent the
    correct newline code or not.

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Poll Results:

Preference	Who

1		philipp@res.enst.fr Thu Nov 17 10:34:16 1994
?		billw@cisco.com Thu Nov 17 17:05:21 1994
2		tytso@MIT.EDU Fri Nov 18 11:40:26 1994
1		braden@ISI.EDU Fri Nov 18 13:10:53 1994
1		tytso@MIT.EDU Fri Nov 18 13:18:30 1994


Thanks for your comments,
Lee Chastain.

TELNET behavior poll results Lee Chastain