Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!MATHOM.CISCO.COM!BILLW
From: BILLW@MATHOM.CISCO.COM (William Westfield)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: TCP/IP terminalservers and BREAK(/^C)
Message-ID: <12441849710.31.BILLW@MATHOM.CISCO.COM>
Date: 27 Oct 88 21:21:42 GMT
References: <711@cgch.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 15

The primary problem is that a terminal server has no way of knowing
which characters are magic.  For example, pretend you come from a DEC
background, and think that ^O should start to flush output.  If you type
^O to the terminal server, and it blindly starts discarding output and
send telnet abort-output to the host, this might be fine.  On the other
hand, you might be in EMACS, and now expect ^O to create a new line. oops.
(I actually used a telnet that handled ^O locally.  It was a pain.)

There is an RFC being written that provides for "local signal handling",
and negotiation of signal characters.  When this rfc goes into effect,
and is implemented by vendors (both host and terminal servers), things
should get a lot better...

Bill Westfield
cisco Systems.
-------