[ih] What does TELNET stand for?

[Jack Haverty]

But still no explanation of the motivation for using the term 
"telnet".... /Jack

On 8/23/25 18:48, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> 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
>>
>

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