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Telnet is a client/server protocol used for accessing remote servers. As the name might suggest, Telnet was originally used on terminals that only required a keyboard because everything on the screen was displayed in text, usually from a mainframe computer. The terminal used Telnet to remotely log in to a mainframe server or other computer. But in recent years, Telnet has fallen out of favor because it doesn’t provide a secure way to communicate with remote servers.
Nevertheless, Telnet still has its uses today. For example, it can be useful for checking connectivity to a remote server. You can use a Telnet client to try and access a port on a remote server. For example, if you are troubleshooting connectivity issues. Or you can use Telnet to enter some commands and run them on a remote server and the output will be returned in the Telnet client.
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You can use Telnet for accessing remote servers if using strong authentication and encryption over the network isn’t critical. One example is connecting to an SMTP server. You might issue some commands to a remote SMTP server to test sending email. The commands below start the Telnet client and then create a connection on SMTP port 25 to a mail server. Then a message is sent before closing the connection.
telnet set localecho open mail.contoso.com 25 ehlo contoso.com mail from: <[email protected]> rcpt to: <[email protected]> notify=success,failure data subject: test email This is a test for Argo . quit
And while Telnet has never been a critical Windows tool, there is a Telnet client built into Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022, although it isn’t enabled by default. In this article, I will show you how to enable the Telnet client using the GUI and command line.
Using the GUI to install the Telnet client in Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022 differs a little. Let’s start with Windows Server 2022.
Follow the instructions below to install the Telnet client using Server Manager.
The Telnet client is installed using the legacy Control Panel in Windows 11.
The Telnet client will now be installed on Windows 11.
The Telnet client can be installed using PowerShell or the DISM command-line tool. The following methods work in Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022.
To install the Telnet client using DISM, following the instructions below.
dism /online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:TelnetClient
To install the Telnet client using PowerShell, following the instructions below.
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName TelnetClient
And that’s it. The Telnet client is now installed.
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