For all the bells and whistle added to Microsoft’s Vista, the OS is the first internet-age Windows release to omit an important vestige of networking history — Telnet, which turns 35 tomorrow.

It was April 3rd, 1972 that Jon Postel published RFC 318, a svelte 4,600 word document describing a "standard method of interfacing terminal devices at one site to processes at another site." 

Devised in a simpler time, Telnet has no encryption and doesn’t come close to meeting modern security standards for logging onto a remote machine. It’s gone virtually unused for years (geeks still use the client to debug TCP services, but only because it’s there). Yet somehow the Telnet client has always managed to stick around in Windows, Linux and Mac OS releases like the gill slits in human embryos. Until now.

If you’re a Vista user, you can celebrate Telnet Day tomorrow by defiantly reinstalling the deleted Telnet client. Microsoft’s instructions are here.

There’s also this history of Telnet, the original
RFC 318, and a super cool list of still-operating public Telnet sites, including the U.S. Library of Congress.

(ASCII art: Ray W.)

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