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Telnet

Choose Telnet as the protocol when adding a host, or in Quick connect, to reach serial console servers and network gear that doesn’t do SSH.

You log in inside the terminal, as you would with any telnet client. After that it works like an SSH session: it’s shared, recorded and attributed, and private sessions and guardrails apply.

Tandem doesn’t negotiate telnet options unless the other end asks, so it also works with raw TCP-to-serial ports.

What’s missing over telnet

  • SFTP
  • Jump hosts
  • Persistent (tmux) sessions
  • run_command, because there’s no POSIX shell to wrap on network gear. Agents use send_input and wait_for instead.

Telnet isn’t encrypted. Logins and everything else cross the network in the clear, so only use it on a separate management network.

Next: Security