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Date:      Mon, 9 Oct 2000 00:55:54 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com>
To:        Jordan Hubbard <jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com>
Cc:        Warner Losh <imp@village.org>, Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven <jruigrok@via-net-works.nl>, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/etc inetd.conf 
Message-ID:  <200010090755.e997tsb02934@earth.backplane.com>
References:   <521.971068411@winston.osd.bsdi.com>

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:
:>     We're kinda in a 'changing of the guard' situation in regards to 
:>     telnet, rsh, rcp, rlogin, verses ssh.   And we have been for about a
:>     year.  The only thing holding the process up has been the patent issue
:>     and that is now gone.
:
:I have to disagree on telnet, as much as I happen to also dislike telnet.
:
:Picture the following scenario: You're working at a data center
:setting up a dozen boxes in a rack and they are not as of yet on any
:public network, they're simply hooked to a hub/switch and can talk to
:one another and the windows laptop you have with you (since all the
:really colorful network sniff/trace software works under windows).
:You'd like to sit in the corner and use the laptop to log into each
:box to further configure it, and let's further say that your laptop
:just got Windows last week and is a pretty stock install.
:
:In the sterner new world you're describing, a whole bunch of extra
:work is now required to go find another network at that data center
:which talks to the outside so that something like putty can be
:located, downloaded and intalled onto the Windows laptop so that it
:can talk to these boxes by default at all.  Either that or you need to
:physically get to each box and turn telnetd back on again before you
:can log in.  It seems like it's making things more complex than they
:need to be for an out-of-box configuration.  If Windows and Macintosh
:boxes supported ssh clients out of the box, perhaps I'd feel
:differently.
:
:- Jordan

    I'm trying to imagine someone setting up a bunch of UNIX
    boxes in a rack using a windows laptop rather then a unix laptop...
    and failing.   Normally I assume that my network is insecure, even
    if there are only UNIX boxes on it all under my control.  Nobody
    in their right mind assumes a LAN with windows boxes on it
    to be even close to secure, so running telnet from a windows box
    to configure a bunch of UNIX machines makes even less
    sense then using the windows box (laptop) in the first place
    instead of a UNIX laptop.

    And also, in order to make telnet operate out of the box you have
    to setup a password anyway.  Anyone booting a UNIX box with
    enough self-configuration to setup a password to telnet into
    can just as easily generate self-configuration to setup
    public and host keys and run sshd... and it's a hellofalot more secure.

    I think we'd be saving sysops from themselves by making them
    consider something other then telnet!  I have not personally used
    telnet in at least four years - not now, not at home, not at
    BEST.

					-Matt


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