[ih] What does TELNET stand for?

[Steve Crocker]

Jim,

Thanks.  It had been nagging at me that I hadn't provided an earlier
reference to Telnet.  We had included the idea of Telnet, along with FTP,
right from the start of our discussions about host level protocols, so it
felt to me that we must have had a name for it.  Thanks for finding this.

Steve Carr was a charter member of the Network Working Group.  He was from
Utah but spent a lot of time in the Bay Area.  To get his work done, he
used an ad hoc version of Telnet on the SRI-NIC SDS 940 to log into the
PDP-10 at Utah.  He, Vint and I were the co-authors of the first paper we
published on the Arpanet protocols, HOST-HOST communication protocol in the
ARPA network, C. S. Carr, S. D. Crocker, V. Cerf, published in AFIPS '70
(Spring).

Steve


On Sat, Aug 23, 2025 at 9:06 PM Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com>
wrote:

> On Sat, Aug 23, 2025 at 9:49 AM Steve Crocker via Internet-history
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> > The first mention of "Telnet" in the RFC series is in RFC 97, A First Cut
> > at a Proposed Telnet Protocol, by John Melvin and Richard Watson.  They
> > were at SRI in Doug Engelbart's group, i.e.. the second node on the
> > Arpanet, and hence an intimate part of the Network Working Group.
>
> RFC 97 may be the first mention of the Telnet protocol. However RFC 15
> (C. Stephen Carr @ UTAH, 9/25/69) is the first mention of Telnet as a
> program. The introduction:
>
> | A set of network primitives has been defined (Network Working Group
> | Note 11) for inclusion in the monitor systems of the respective
> | HOSTS.  These primitives are at the level of system calls: SPOP's or
> | BRS's on the 940; UUO's on the PDP-10.  Presumably these UUO's are
> | accessible to all user programs when executing for users whose status
> | bits allow network access.
> |
> | In addition to user program access, a convenient means for direct
> | network access from the terminal is desirable.  A sub-system called
> | "Telnet" is proposed which is a shell program around the network
> | system primitives, allowing a teletype or similar terminal at a
> | remote host to function as a teletype at the serving host.
>
> RFCs before 15 just refer to a "teletype like connection".
>
> Jim
>


-- 
Sent by a Verified

sender