How To Telnet

If you are new to the process of Telnet and have never accessed a Telnet BBS system before, the following is a mini-tutorial of how the Telnet process works and how to use a Telnet client.

Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) have been around long before the Internet. Traditional BBS systems that were “dial-up” based were accessed by dialing them directly with your analog telephone modem. This meant you used a “terminal program” to access these BBS systems. Accessing BBS systems via the Internet also requires a terminal program called a Telnet Client. While most operating systems have a built-in Telnet Client, we do not recommend these as they do not display the graphics correctly. Instead, we suggest any of the following free Telnet Client programs for your operating system (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, etc.)

Telnet Client Programs

(Recommended)

SyncTerm (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc.)

NetRunner (Windows, Linux)

EtherTerm (Windows, Linux)

mTelnet (Windows, OS/2)

There are other Telnet clients will work, but they are not free:

ZOC (Windows, Mac OS X)

NetTerm (Windows)

Command Line Telnet

(Not Recommended)

You can also use the command line from your operating system. Though this will work, the graphics may or may not display correctly.

Windows

By default, Windows does not install the Telnet Client in Windows anymore. You will need to “turn on” the Telnet Client first. Once that is turned on, you can either open up a Command Prompt, or run the Telnet command from the Run menu.

Click on Start, then Run. Then type in:

Telnet yourdomain.com

Where “yourdomain.com” is either a domain name (example – bbs.dmine.net) or a number (example – 127.0.0.1)

Example: telnet bbs.dmine.net

or

telnet 127.0.0.1

Linux, Mac OS X and other Unix

For Linux – Some Linux distributions do not have the Telnet Client installed. Run the appropriate “yum” command to install the Telnet client for your particular Linux distribution. Once the Telnet client is installed, open up a Terminal window. Then type in:

Telnet yourdomain.com

Where “yourdomain.com” is either a domain name (example – bbs.dmine.net) or a number (example – 127.0.0.1)

Example: telnet bbs.dmine.net

or

telnet 127.0.0.1

Last updated: February 1, 2021