NCSA Telnet

Last updated
Original author(s) Gaige Paulsen
Tim Krauskopf
Aaron Contorer
Initial release1986;38 years ago (1986)
Final release
2.3.08 (MS-DOS) [1]
2.6 (Macintosh) / 1 February 1995;29 years ago (1995-02-01)
License Public domain

NCSA Telnet is an implementation of the Telnet protocol developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, first released in 1986 [2] and continuously developed until 1995. [1] The initial implementation ran under Mac OS and Microsoft MS-DOS, and provided basic DEC VT102 terminal emulation with support for multiple simultaneous connections and an FTP client. NCSA Telnet was the first implementation of telnet for the Macintosh or PC that provided the ability to connect to multiple hosts simultaneously.

Over time, the program evolved with added features and revisions to the user interface. Support for Tektronix 4010/4014 vector terminal emulation and a protocol for downloading and viewing raster images were added.

In 1987, a short-lived version for Sun Microsystems SunOS was released.

Although the MS-DOS version of NCSA Telnet lost popularity after Microsoft Windows became widespread, the Macintosh version remained in use throughout the 1990s as a basic connectivity tool in academic and commercial installations.

NCSA Telnet originally used a built-in TCP/IP protocol stack to communicate over the network. As standard APIs became available for network communication, the program was adapted to use them, most notably Apple's MacTCP. However, the built-in stack, one of the few completely independently developed TCP/IP stacks in use at the time, continued to ship in the software for years.

NCSA Telnet was released as free and open source software (although the term "open source" was not yet in use), and as such spawned a number of spin-off products including

Related Research Articles

AppleTalk is a discontinued proprietary suite of networking protocols developed by Apple Computer for their Macintosh computers. AppleTalk includes a number of features that allow local area networks to be connected with no prior setup or the need for a centralized router or server of any sort. Connected AppleTalk-equipped systems automatically assign addresses, update the distributed namespace, and configure any required inter-networking routing.

Telnet is a client/server application protocol that provides access to virtual terminals of remote systems on local area networks or the Internet. It is a protocol for bidirectional 8-bit communications. Its main goal was to connect terminal devices and terminal-oriented processes.

A network operating system (NOS) is a specialized operating system for a network device such as a router, switch or firewall.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cello (web browser)</span> Web browser

Cello is an early, discontinued graphical web browser for Windows 3.1; it was developed by Thomas R. Bruce of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. It was released as shareware in 1993. While other browsers ran on various Unix machines, Cello was the first web browser for Microsoft Windows, using the winsock system to access the Internet. In addition to the basic Windows, Cello worked on Windows NT 3.5 and with small modifications on OS/2.

Systems Network Architecture (SNA) is IBM's proprietary networking architecture, created in 1974. It is a complete protocol stack for interconnecting computers and their resources. SNA describes formats and protocols but, in itself, is not a piece of software. The implementation of SNA takes the form of various communications packages, most notably Virtual Telecommunications Access Method (VTAM), the mainframe software package for SNA communications.

In computing, the Windows Sockets API (WSA), later shortened to Winsock, is an application programming interface (API) that defines how Windows network application software should access network services, especially TCP/IP. It defines a standard interface between a Windows TCP/IP client application and the underlying TCP/IP protocol stack. The nomenclature is based on the Berkeley sockets API used in BSD for communications between programs.

Open Transport was the name given by Apple Inc. to its implementation of the Unix-originated System V STREAMS networking stack. Based on code licensed from Mentat's Portable Streams product, Open Transport was built to provide the classic Mac OS with a modern TCP/IP implementation, replacing MacTCP. Apple also added its own implementation of AppleTalk to the stack to support legacy networks.

IPX/SPX stands for Internetwork Packet Exchange/Sequenced Packet Exchange. IPX and SPX are networking protocols used initially on networks using the Novell NetWare operating systems. They also became widely used on networks deploying Microsoft Windows LANS, as they replaced NetWare LANS, but are no longer widely used. IPX/SPX was also widely used prior to and up to Windows XP, which supported the protocols, while later Windows versions do not, and TCP/IP took over for networking.

The Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), formerly AppleTalk Filing Protocol, is a proprietary network protocol, and part of the Apple File Service (AFS), that offers file services for macOS, classic Mac OS, and Apple II computers. In OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and earlier, AFP was the primary protocol for file services. Starting with OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Server Message Block (SMB) was made the primary file sharing protocol, with the ability to run an AFP server removed later in macOS 11 Big Sur. AFP supports Unicode file names, POSIX and access-control list permissions, resource forks, named extended attributes, and advanced file locking.

AppleShare is a discontinued product from Apple Computer which implements various network services. Its main purpose is to act as a file server, using the AFP protocol. Other network services implemented in later versions of AppleShare included a print server using the Printer Access Protocol (PAP), web server, electronic mail server, and SMB / CIFS server to support file sharing to Microsoft Windows clients.

Synchronet is a multiplatform BBS software package, with current ports for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and BSD variants. Past versions also ran on MS-DOS and OS/2, but support for those platforms were dropped in version 3.0.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FTP Software</span> Defunct software company

FTP Software, Inc., was an American software company incorporated in 1986 by James van Bokkelen, John Romkey, Nancy Connor, Roxanne van Bokkelen, Dave Bridgham, and several other founding shareholders, who met at Toscanini's in Central Square after an email went out over the Bandykin mailing list looking for people interested in starting a company. Their main product was PC/TCP, a full-featured, standards-compliant TCP/IP package for DOS. The company was based in Andover, Massachusetts. It also had a number of offices throughout the United States and overseas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">3270 emulator</span>

A 3270 Emulator is a terminal emulator that duplicates the functions of an IBM 3270 mainframe computer terminal on a computer, usually a PC or similar microcomputer.

Amiga software is computer software engineered to run on the Amiga personal computer. Amiga software covers many applications, including productivity, digital art, games, commercial, freeware and hobbyist products. The market was active in the late 1980s and early 1990s but then dwindled. Most Amiga products were originally created directly for the Amiga computer, and were not ported from other platforms.

PATHWORKS was the trade name used by Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Massachusetts for a series of programs that eased the interoperation of Digital's minicomputers and servers with personal computers. It was available for both PC and Mac systems, with support for MS-DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows on the PC. Before it was named PATHWORKS, it was known as PCSA.

TCPware is a third party layered product published by "Process Software LLC" of Framingham, Massachusetts to add TCP/IP capabilities to Digital Equipment Corporation's VMS operating system. In the early 1990s Digital Equipment Corporation had an internal policy favoring their own product, DECnet. Meanwhile, many VMS users in governments, large corporations and universities were discovering the "TCP/IP based" internet and required third party software to enable connectivity to it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GatorBox</span>

The GatorBox is a LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge, a router used on Macintosh-based networks to allow AppleTalk communications between clients on LocalTalk and Ethernet physical networks. The GatorSystem software also allowed TCP/IP and DECnet protocols to be carried to LocalTalk-equipped clients via tunneling, providing them with access to these normally Ethernet-only systems.

InterCon Systems Corporation was founded in April 1988 by Kurt D. Baumann and Mikki Barry to produce software to connect Macintosh computers in environments that were not Macintosh-exclusive. At the time, there was no real concept of the Internet and there was still a question of whether the TCP/IP protocols or OSI protocols would be adopted widely. Over the next 9 years, the company grew from three employees to over 100 and sold software in the US, Europe and Japan.

TOPS is a peer-to-peer LAN-based file sharing system best known in its Macintosh implementation, but also available for DOS and able to interoperate with Unix's NFS. Originally written by Centram Systems West, the company was purchased by Sun Microsystems as part of Sun's development of the NFS ecosystem. The Centram company was renamed to TOPS after its acquisition by Sun. Sales of TOPS dried up after the introduction of System 7, which featured a similar file sharing system built-in, and Sun spun off their NFS developments to Sitka.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ZOC (software)</span>

ZOC is a popular computer-based terminal emulator and Telnet software client for the Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh macOS operating systems that supports telnet, modem, SSH 1 and 2, ISDN, serial, TAPI, Rlogin and other means of communication. Its terminal emulator supports Xterm emulation with full colors, meta-keys and local printing, VT102, VT220 and several types of ANSI as well as Wyse, TVI, TN3270, and Sun's CDE. It supports full keyboard remapping, scripting in REXX and other languages, and support for named pipes.

References

  1. 1 2 "Information on NCSA Telnet". NCSA. 18 May 2001. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011.
  2. Computer Science at ILLINOIS. "CS History | Department of Computer Science at Illinois". Cs.illinois.edu. Archived from the original on 2014-03-06. Retrieved 2015-06-25.
  3. "tn3270 for the Macintosh". Brown.edu. October 2019.