[ih] What does TELNET stand for?

[vinton cerf]

BBN spawned a company called Telenet but that should not be confused with
Telnet or TELNET.
I think someone may have been pulling your leg with "teleportation" -

The first spec for the Telnet protocol is RFC 97:
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc97.txt

v


On Sat, Aug 23, 2025 at 3:26 PM Michael Grant via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> I first encountered telnet in the early 80s, probably while I was at
> UofMD, though I think the ITS machines also had it.  I remember asking
> someone what it meant and it was explained to me that it came from the
> concept of teleportation but instead of 'teleport', it was like
> telenetting but got shortened to just 'telnet'.  A plausible
> explanation; I never gave it further thought until reading this thread
> that this plausible etymology was never so!
>
> Michael Grant
>
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