Description of the Telnet Server Service Administration Tool

Certain versions of Windows 2000 include a Telnet Server service for remote administration. Telnet is a service that allows a Telnet client to connect across a network and access a command session. This is similar to the way UNIX allows incoming shell connections.

The article describes the operation of the command-line tool used for configuration, and the basic security required to log on.

The Telnet Server Service Administration tool includes options that you can use to start, stop, or get information about the Windows 2000 Telnet Server service. You can get a list of current users, terminate a user's session, and change Telnet registry settings.

The Telnet Server Service Administration tool is command-line based. To run the tool, click Start, click Run, type tlntadmn.exe in the Open box, and then click OK.

The Telnet Server Service Administration tool includes the following options:

• Option: 0
  Name: Quit this application
  Description: Ends the Telnet Server Administration session.
• Option: 1
  Name: List the current users
  Description: Lists the current users, including user name, domain, remote computer, session ID, and log time.
• Option: 2
  Name: Terminate a user session
  Description: Terminates a selected user's session.
• Option: 3
  Name: Display/change registry settings
  Description: Provides a list of registry settings that you can change. For more information about these settings, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
  226107  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/226107/EN-US/ ) Registry Tools for Telnet Server Services in Windows 2000
• Option: 4
  Name: Start the service
  Description: Starts the Windows 2000 Telnet Server service.
• Option: 5
  Name: Stop the service
  Description: Stops the Windows 2000 Telnet Server service.

The Telnet Server service is similar to the version included with Service for UNIX (SFU) with one major difference. The version included with Windows 2000 is limited to two inbound connections.

Security

Unlike many Telnet services, the Microsoft Telnet Server service offers a method of secure logon using NTLM security. Most services allow for only a "clear text" logon, which sends your password across the network in an unencrypted form. This means that anyone monitoring network traffic can capture your account name and password. For more information about how to use this setting, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Logons to the server are considered to be local connections. Therefore, to log on to the Telnet server, a user account must be able to log on locally. File permissions are based on NTFS file system security. If you have partitions using the FAT or FAT32 file system on your server, any user who has access to Telnet can gain access to all resources on these volumes.