How to telnet to a port using telnet on Windows 10

Telnet is a small application that can be used on your local device to communicate using a textbase, command line, bidirectional interactive terminal. Telnet use port 23 as the default telnet port to send and receive text data over the network.

In Short Answer:

To telnet a port you can use the following command: telnet <host/ip> <port>

Example: telnet openport.net 443

Here is a step by step guide:

Telnet was the chosen command line tool for communication over the network, you were able to open a connection using telnet to a remote device and, if the remote device had a telnet server installed on it you can run the command on that server.

In late time, telnet protocol is less in use due to lake of security, telnet sends a receive pure text that is not encrypted and that why most of the terminal communication move to the Secure Shell known as SSH.

Telnet Port:

Telnet uses a default port for communication, the default telnet port is 23, but you can use telnet on any other port you want. As telnet is a command line interface tool that expects parameters you can set the port you want to connect to.

How to telnet a port:

First, let’s check if telnet is installed on our system. To do so, we need to open the command line interface. You can do it in several ways.

Open the command line – option 1:

1) Press the Windows logo button on the keyboard.

2) Start typing cmd

3) You will see the command prompt app.

4) Open it

5) Once you press the Open the command line interface will open:

Open the command line – option 2:

1) Press the Windows+R combination (Windows logo button on the keyboard + R) to open the Run windows.

2) Type in cmd and press enter or click OK.

Running the telnet command:

Once you have your command line windows open you can type in telnet to check if telnet is installed on your system.

If telnet is not installed on your system, please refer to installing telnet on windows 10 section to installing it

In the following example, we use telnet /? command that will show us the help options for the telnet command.

If you only type telnet and it installed on your system it will enter you into the telnet interactive session. To exit from this terminal to the command prompt again type quit and press enter.

To telnet a port you can use the following command: telnet <host/ip> <port>

Example: telnet openport.net 443

How do you know if the port is open or not? from the return answer. If you see the following text in your command prompt screen it means that the remote port is close.

Could not open connection to the host, on port <PORT NUMBER>: Connect failed

If the connection was established you will see a blank screen. To exit this screen, you can try to type quit and press enter or wait for the time out. You can also close the command prompt screen by pressing the x.

Installing Telnet on Windows 10:

In case you need to install telnet client on your local Windows 10 device, you will see the following error message when trying to run the telnet command: ‘telnet’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

You will have to install it, here are the steps to install telnet client on your system:

1) Press the Windows logo button on the keyboard.

2) Start typing turn features

3) Open the Turn Windows features option.

4) In the Windows Features window that is opening, wait for it to load and scroll down till you see telnet client.

5) Mark it and press OK.

6) It might take several minutes and telnet will be installed on your system.

Conclusions:

In this how to telnet to a port using telnet on Windows 10 article, we take you step by steps in how to use the telnet command line tool on windows 10 to check a remote port.

You were able to learn the following:

1. Use telnet to check a remote port.
2. Open the command prompt 2 methods.
3. Install telnet client on your Windows 10 box (if telnet is not already installed).

You can refer to our guide article if you want to learn more.