How to activate telnet windows 10

In this guide, we will show you what you need to do to activate telnet on windows 10 operation system. From time to time, there might be a need to check network connectivity from your system to a remote device. It can be inside your local area or outside your local area, like on the web. An example can be a website.

Telnet is a small command-line tool that enables you to connect a remote server and send text-based data between the systems. It can give you the option to control the remote device using command line commands. In the past telnet was a high usage protocol for connection between Linux systems and from Windows box to Linux box, or even routers and switches. Telnet by default using port 23 for the comunication. But due to the nature of the tool, you can select another port to be used.

Today, due to lake of encryption support for the telnet protocol it is less in use for remote control and had been replaced by the SSH (Secure Shell) protocol.

The main disadvantage of telnet is that the data is transferred in plain text, which makes it unsafe when sensitive data need to be transferred. One of the examples is that the user password is sent in plain text over the network allowing every sniffing tool to capture this password.

 Activate telnet windows 10 step by step:

Here are the steps to do for enabling telnet on windows 10.

1) Press on the Windows button.

2) Start typing – Turn Windows feature:

Telnet windows 10 turn windows feature
Telnet windows 10 turn windows feature

3) This will open the Windows Feature Screen.

Windows Features Screen
Windows Features Screen – Activate telent

4) Verify that Telnet Client is selected (mark with V).

5) Press on the OK button.

You will now see an installation window that will install telnet to your device. It will not take to long and the message will be changed to installation completed.

Once you see the message it means that telnet client was installed on your system.

Testing telnet on Windows 10:

Now that telnet was installed on your system, it is time to test it. The first thing to do is to open the command-line shell.

Telnet is a command-line tool. The meaning is that it runs from the command line interface and it gets parameters as input.

Lest open the command-line interface.

One option is to press the Windows button + R to open the run command, type in cmd and press enter.

The Run Command Window
The Run Command Window

Another option is to press the Windows key and start typing cmd. When using this method you can select if you want to open it as administrator or not.

Open command prompt option 1
Open a command prompt with the administration option.

Once you open it, you will get the black command prompt screen:

Command prompt screen
Command prompt screen

The next step is to use the telnet command.

In general, the telnet command will get 2 parameters:

  1. Remote device/host – you can specify IP address, hostname, URL that you want to connect to using telnet.
  2. Port number – The port number you want to use for the connection. This can be a port you want to check if it open or close.

Here is an example for the telnet command:

telnet openport.net 443

Telnet connection established screen
Telnet connection established screen

The above command will try to connect to port 433 on the openport.net (this site) website.

Port 443  is the default port that the HTTPS protocol is using, and this site is using a secure protocol so you will see a “jumping” empty screen with the telnet title. This means that the port is open.

An error message will look like this:

Telnet connection error message
Telnet connection error message

Now that you can see telnet is installed and running you can type the following to get help on telnet:

telnet /?

Here is the output of the command.

Telnet help screen
Telnet help screen

 

In this article, we show you how to activate or enable telnet on Windows 10. We did a small test using telnet to connect a remote device and see the help screen of the tool.

 

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