T
Story
A list of fun destinations for telnet
My favourite way back in the day (late 90s/early 00s or so) was telling people to go start->run->telnet www.boston.ru and it would be a little asciimation of a penis getting erect and then spurting with a pc speaker noise...

People would sometimes flip out like they had gotten a virus or whatever

The Star Wars ASCII animation was how I learned telnet existed. Felt like discovering a secret passage in the internet.

There's something pure about text-based interfaces. No loading spinners, no JavaScript frameworks, no cookie banners. Just text.

For real! I just unlocked my memory of the Star Wars asciimation. Totally forgot it existed until now.
  • nomel
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  • 9 hours ago
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Wanting to know how email worked and then stumbling on it being mentioned next to the relevant RFCs was my first exposure! You could easily check pop3 mail over telnet, by sending all the commands by hand. HELO!

I then made my first email client, then an RFC later, and after browsing the web through telnet for a while, made my first web server!

I think I was the only one in the operations team who knew how to use telnet to check connections and existence of adresses on company and outside email servers. As well as other low level tools to diagnose problems with Windows PCs and servers. There just weren't any gui tools like that.
I have checked right now that Multi-User Dungeons we played in the 90s, still exist and are played. 35 years later!

Telnet or Mudnet client needed :)

I’ve just poked my schoolmate - he almost didn’t graduate because of MUD.

During the Summer of 1997, I stayed at my university and had a job at the computer lab in the basement of the library. We had four Windows 95 PCs, four Mac Quadras, and then tons of VT terminals. I specifically remember the one at the lab assistants desk being a VT-320. Anyway, it was enough for me to telnet to BatMUD. I got all the way up to level 32 or so (and made some friends!) before I stopped playing. Man, that was a great Summer. Well ... it was great until I got cheated on but that's a whole other story. :-p
MUDding both taught me programming and pretty well wrecked my schooling, although in fairness, I didn't take college very seriously. Never finished my degree, which I now regret.
  • tosti
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  • 6 hours ago
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Telnet was among my debugging tools for web applications.

And sending an email without line editing felt much more exciting than a dedicated mail client. Just dig the remote MX, telnet to port 25 and do it by hand. Marvelous!

  • ale42
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  • 3 hours ago
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EHLO! You're definitely not alone on this RFC path ;-)
sending email over telnet was part of my training as tech support for a dial-up ISP.
Back in 1991 the older students showed me how to telnet to port 25 and make my "From:" email address be anything. It was funny when the person sitting next to me received an email from satan@hell.gov
We run a copy using https://github.com/gabe565/ascii-movie, you can `nc starwars.s2.dev 23`

It's our favorite way of demoing s2.dev, https://x.com/jrdi/status/2014318511120670859

Not many moving pictures either. It was like the literary age of the internet.
Whenever I want to go back to this era, I fire up w3m. Not everything works but things work well enough to quench my thirst
The tradition lives on here: ssh -p 1977 sw.taigrr.com
I remember showing it to people on school computers circa....2008? Which was funny because nearly everything was blocked on these machines......but CMD and telnet worked fine lol. I remembered the URL by heart because of it :D
"I Ping, Therefore I Am": https://www.ipingthereforeiam.com/bbs/
I was wondering why the Starwars one is not at the top of the list. Then I saw it no longer exists :-(
  • sigio
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  • 8 hours ago
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It still exists, and still works. I was sure I showed it to someone a few months ago, and just confirmed, it's still online. (I know the guy who built it). It works over ipv4 and v6, with the ipv6 version having some additions ;)
Thanks! Admittedly I didn't check before writing my comment. It does indeed still work! Maybe one has to enable ipv6.
  • w4yai
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  • 5 hours ago
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Doesn't work for me
  • VMG
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  • 5 hours ago
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Note that this is much more dangerous than visiting a website. ANSI escape sequences can seriously mess with your system, RCE included.
  • kjs3
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  • 2 hours ago
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Note that this is much more dangerous than visiting a website.

Are you being hyperbolic or do you seriously think the attack surface area of ANSI escape sequences is 'much more' than, say, Javascrpt?

Wow, that takes me back. It reminds me of the pre-web days when people would set up telnet services for providing information about the weather, ham radio callsigns, lyrics, FTP search engine (archie), and of course BBSs. An acquaintance of mine maintained a list of telnet BBSs and services that was fairly popular at the time. [1]

[1] http://www.textfiles.com/bbs/BBSLISTS/internetinfo.txt

I did Pong, Breakout and Tetris few years ago: telnet milek7.pl
  • mwest
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  • 10 hours ago
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Very cool, some nice nostalgia looking through that list!

Missed a trick not being able to “telnet telnet.org” though. :-)

try .com
  • mwest
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  • 2 hours ago
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That doesn't work either? Looks like the .com and .net domains are sadly just up for sale rather than being used for something fun.
Oh man RIP towel.blinkenlights.nl 23
Anyone knows what happened with it? Maybe the creator would like to pass the torch?
  • sigio
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  • 8 hours ago
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Its still running just fine
Connecting to it times out for me.

  traceroute:
      ...
  15  213.136.2.6  35.049 ms  34.440 ms  34.338 ms
  16  213.136.2.20  34.814 ms  33.359 ms  35.116 ms
  17  213.154.229.42  33.837 ms  33.572 ms  34.794 ms
  18  213.136.8.188  30.174 ms  28.810 ms  33.674 ms

  tcptraceroute ... 23 :
      ...
  15  213.136.2.6  28.626 ms  28.657 ms  28.849 ms
  16  213.136.2.20  28.608 ms  28.483 ms  28.515 ms
  17  213.154.229.42  27.989 ms  28.058 ms  29.336 ms
  18  * * *
  • sigio
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  • 5 hours ago
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Ah, it must be ipv6 only now then:

                             My traceroute  [v0.95]
t14 (2a0e:5700:xxxx) -> towel.blinkenl2026-01-27T13:33:52+0100 Keys: Help Display mode Restart statistics Order of fields quit Packets Pings Host Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev 1. 2a0e:5700:xxxxxx 0.0% 4 0.8 0.9 0.8 1.2 0.2 2. 2a02:f640:xxxxxx 0.0% 4 8.5 9.3 8.4 11.0 1.2 3. 2a02:f640::1 0.0% 4 8.2 8.8 8.2 9.2 0.5 4. amsix-501.xe-0-0-0.jun1.bit-1.ne 0.0% 4 12.9 13.1 11.7 15.3 1.6 5. e48.leaf-sw2.bit-1.network.bit.n 0.0% 4 10.7 11.2 10.7 11.8 0.5 6. lo0.leaf-sw3.bit-2b.network.bit. 0.0% 4 11.8 12.0 11.8 12.3 0.3 7. 2001:7b8::213:136:2:43 0.0% 4 12.8 12.0 11.2 12.8 0.7 8. deepthought.blinkenlights.nl 0.0% 4 12.4 11.8 11.4 12.4 0.4 9. towel.blinkenlights.nl 0.0% 3 11.6 11.8 11.5 12.2 0.4

      .....                    @@@@@    @@@@@              ...........   
      ......                  @     @  @     @             ..........    
      .......                    @@@   @     @             .........     
      ........                 @@      @     @             ........      
       ........               @@@@@@@   @@@@@  th          .......       
         .......            -----------------------        ......        
           ......             C  E  N  T  U  R  Y          .....         
             .....          -----------------------        ....          
                ...         @@@@@ @@@@@ @   @ @@@@@        ...           
                  ==          @   @      @ @    @          ==            
                __||__        @   @@@@    @     @        __||__          
               |      |       @   @      @ @    @       |      |         
      _________|______|_____  @   @@@@@ @   @   @  _____|______|_________
```
alternative: telehack.com
  • pards
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  • 5 hours ago
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My first introduction to the internet was through the telnet-based EW-too talkers like Foothills (Boston U) and Forest (UTS). I have very fond memories of staying up late talking to people from all over the globe. It was truly amazing to me.

The best part was how the users moderated behaviour - bad actors were ejected swiftly but rarely permanently.

The first BBS I used in the 80's eventually ended up with a telnet daemon but its owner passed away and I think the person that took it over eventually shut lois.org down. Domain is still registered. I can't fault them, it was an ancient system.
For telnet.wiki.gd, there is a captcha:

Captcha: Repeat the first spacecraft to land on another planet three times.

All my answers failed. I guess I must be a computer.

Tried:

- Venera

- Venera 7

- the first spacecraft to land on another planet three times.

- the first spacecraft to land on another planet three times

- the first spacecraft to land on another planet the first spacecraft to land on another planet the first spacecraft to land on another planet

- Rosetta

...

Okay found it: Venera Venera Venera

> - the first spacecraft to land on another planet the first spacecraft to land on another planet the first spacecraft to land on another planet

The Wi-Fi password is "four words all uppercase, one word all lowercase".

  • fer
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  • 3 hours ago
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venera venera venera
nethack.alt.org is conspicuously absent...
  • tux3
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  • 5 hours ago
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It supports SSH. Since that's already in place, not much point in telnet, especially since NAO wants a password. And you prettu much have to go out of your way to install a telnet client these days.

That's a bit like connecting to IRC with netcat. It's easy to do, there's some kind of a retro hacker feel to it, but it's just not very practical.

  • anthk
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  • 8 hours ago
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And Slashem (his expanded sibling) and the server for Dungeon Crawl (for people which prefer action over exploration).
For those of you curious about what the Star Wars one looked like, the tradition lives on here: ssh -p 1977 sw.taigrr.com
just type `starwars` from telehack
for years I had this in my .muttrc. it's been commented out since it stopped working...

#set signature="cat ~/.signature && telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl 666 | tail -n3|"

Per this thread it may be IPv6 only now.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46775926

  • api
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  • 4 hours ago
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If you run stuff like ZeroTier or Tailscale or any other encrypted mesh or VPN you can just run telnetd and happily remote access with plain text.

Not that it buys you anything other than being retro. :)

Surfers!
Wasted opportunity for a telnet.net or tel.net domain.
  • ale42
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  • 3 hours ago
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This makes me think of the historical hxxp://simtel.net/ domain (now web spam, whence the hxxp), see e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20010602231157/http://www.simtel.... The first time seeing it I was always thinking to something like "simulated telnet"...
If you want a rabbit hole, this is the likely owner of both tel.net and sms.net = https://www.gbnet.net/
Also teln.et (Ethiopia)
  • sgt
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  • 11 hours ago
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This is insane

> doom.w-graj.net 666

> Play Doom in the terminal (code and details)

Any one got a good MUD to recommend?
BatMUD is the one I played a long time ago, and has been around for 35 years now. I honestly don't know how active it is these days.

https://www.bat.org

this is ssh, but funky.nondterministic.computer is one
ssh doesn't support virtual hosts, otherwise I'd try some other stuff. There's just something to be said for running on the default port.
uff I hope i can list my MUD game (still in dev, though)
Say more, what’s the influence? My favorite branches were Diku/Merc and Circle based. SMAUG, Envy, ROM. Somewhere on a hard drive lives Abyss of Curak, my colorful and (in 1998) briefly popular MUD.
SillyMUD branches will always have a special place in my heart. Who doesn’t love leveling up in Sesame Street?!
I can forsee a future when all the AI slop, popups, fake news, propaganda and ads have fully consumed the web.

Maybe then we just go back to an oldschool text based way of communicating.

No google. No socials. Just text.

  • VMG
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  • 3 hours ago
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Do you believe that it is impossible to advertise, spread fake news or propaganda via text?

Do you know what the letters in LLM mean?

That should be Gopher for websites but advertisers would find it should it become popular. Text chat via IRCD. Advertisers get banned on IRC.
Or its modern incarnation, Gemini. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)
We'll all just be fingering each other.
  • Vaslo
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  • 1 hour ago
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Can’t tell if this is a sexual comment or a comment on people tattling on each other but thought provoking either way
Related to the last Telnet CVE? Why talking about telnet now otherwise?
haha, I was just going to say the same thing
  • tgv
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  • 6 hours ago
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    ~/work/...> telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
    zsh: command not found: telnet
Search your OS repositories for something like inetutils-telnet.
  • tgv
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  • 3 hours ago
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I know. It's just that out-of-the-box, telnet isn't even installed anymore.
telnet isn't even installed anymore.

This is expected. Telnet is not encrypted and people are discouraged from using the client or the inetd daemon. It is assumed that if someone installs it manually it is more likely they have a reason to do so and hopefully understand the risks. It will always exist in repositories as there are still a myriad of enterprise appliances that use telnet for management and likely will be the case for the foreseeable future.

netcat is though
May be a case of PEBKAC.