Telnet lets your computer act as a terminal that is part of a remote system, where everything you type is sent to the remote system and everything the remote system sends to you is displayed on your computer. As long as you have proper authorization, such as user name and password, with Windows NT you can use Telnet to connect to any system that supports it. For instance, say you're working at a remote office and you want to check your Internet E-mail. If the Windows NT machine you are working on is connected to the Internet, you can use Telnet to access your own Internet account. Remember, to use Tel-net, you must be on-line.

First, start up the Telnet client. Go to your Start menu and select Programs, Accessories, Telnet. You also can open Telnet by going to Start, choosing Run, and typing telnet. Up pops the terminal window. You will use the Connect, Edit, Terminal, and Help menu choices to create an entry for and connect to a remote site.

Connect does what the name implies. It lets you control all connection options, including logging into and logging off from a remote location. Edit lets you do what it does in most other Windows programs, albeit in a limited fashion, namely copying and pasting. Terminal controls your preferences and records your session (more on that in a bit), and Help provides you with a handy online manual.

Now that your Telnet window is open, let's connect to a remote site. Go to Connect and choose Remote System. You'll be prompted to input the host name, port, and terminal type. You'll need to obtain the host name from someone at the host site; it likely will be of the form "company.com." Unless you're instructed otherwise by the remote system host account manager, leave the default values, where Port is set to Telnet, and Term Type is set to VT100.

After you've typed in the name of the site, you'll see prompts from the host. What you do from there is between you and the remote system.

One more note about connecting. Once you've connected to a remote site, it will appear in the pull-down Connect menu. Rather than typing it in each time, simply select that site the next time you want to use Telnet to connect to it.

OK, you've done what you wanted to do, whether it was check your E-mail or access the card catalog of a library. Ready to log off? If you merely want to disconnect from that particular session, go to Connect and choose Disconnect. If you're ready to close down the Telnet client altogether, select Exit.

Telnet Features.

Telnet has some neat features, including the ability to record an entire session. Open up your Telnet client and log into the remote host. Now, go to Terminal and select Start Logging. Choose the name of the session (the default is telnet.log, but you may want to name it something more descriptive, such as "publib1.log") and the location to which the file will be saved. Until you select Stop Logging, the session will be recorded.

Another great feature of Telnet is that you can run multiple sessions. Suppose you're checking your E-mail, but you want to log into the public catalog of the National Library of Medicine at the same time. To do so, just open up a new Telnet screen and follow the connection procedure you use for all Telnet logons. Your Taskbar will show you which windows you have open, so you can toggle back and forth the way you do with any other Windows NT application.

In addition, Telnet lets you specify preferences such as font, terminal emulation, and buffer lines. Under Terminal, choose Prefer-ences, and a dialog box will pop up with many options. The Terminal Options section lets you select whether you want to see the characters as you type them (depending upon default of the remote system, you may need to check the Local Echo Box), whether you want the cursor to blink and/or appear as a block or underscore, and which character sequence is sent as a result of using the arrow keys.

Other Preference options let you control your font, font style, and font size; the color of the text, and the number of lines that can be saved in the buffer. Lastly, you can specify the terminal-emulation type; if you're not sure which terminal to select, select VT-100/ANSI.

by Heidi V. Anderson