Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!wasatch!haas
From: haas@wasatch.UUCP (Walt Haas)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Rlogin vs Telnet in terminal servers
Message-ID: <510@wasatch.UUCP>
Date: 4 Nov 88 18:47:23 GMT
References: <1020@murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au>
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Lines: 21

In article <1020@murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au>, kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz) writes:
> The most likely reason for wanting "rlogin support" in a terminal
> server is 100% unrelated to protocols, automatic login (which is
> typically not applicable anyway) , terminal type negotiation, or
> any of the rest of all of this "can telnet really do ...?" stuff.
> 
> The real reason is that users have become trained that the way
> one connects to a destination host is by using
> 
> 	rlogin host

I couldn't agree with you less... I don't think anybody around here cares
what they have to type to get there, the issue is transparency.  The TELNET
spec is written so that almost minimal subset, no matter how useless, can
be advertised as a TELNET implementation.  Combined with a total lack of
conformance testing, we have a protocol "standard" that probably does more
harm than good.  By contrast rlogin code is usually a copy of the Berkeley
code so the implementations are a lot more consistent, and the functionality
is a lot more transparent to the user.

Cheers  -- Walt Haas    haas@cs.utah.edu    utah-cs!haas