Breaking the telnet addiction with netcat
After many years of use it’s become almost second nature to type ‘telnet <HOST> <PORT>’ when I need to see if a system has TCP port <PORT> open. Newer systems no longer install telnet by default:
$ telnet google.com 80
-bash: telnet: command not found
I can’t think of a valid reason to keep telnet around (there are probably valid use cases). Since netcat and tcpdump are a billion times better for debugging TCP issues, I need to apply newer microcode to my brain to perform a ‘s/telnet/nc -v/g’ each time I need to test if a TCP port is open:
$ nc -v google.com 80
Connection to google.com 80 port [tcp/http] succeeded!
Anyone else have a telnet attachment they just can’t break? :)
OpenAttitude on June 28th, 2012
Hey… I have subscribed to your RSS and I read all your writep-ups since OpenSolaris times… Just want to say “Thank you!”
-SS