We earn commission when you buy through affiliate links.

This does not influence our reviews or recommendations.Learn more.

Telnet is a web connection protocol used to remotely access a computer and provides two-way text-based communication.

So you need a telnet server and client to talk to each other.

Telnet is one of the popular Linux/Windows utilities that has long served its purpose.

A major problem with telnet on modern systems is that it is not secure.

All communication in telnet happens in plain text, and all connection traffic is unencrypted.

Essentially anyone with proper access and tools can snoop on web link traffic to read this traffic.

One can simply test whether the remote TCP port is listening and responding properly using the telnet command.

The below snippet shows how we can check ifgoogle.comis up and working by checkingHTTP/HTTPSconnectivity.

Well be discussing how to install and use this tool on RHEL8 and similar systems.

What is nc?

Originally written fornmapproject, there are now multiple Netcat implementations available.

It works with both TCP and UDP across IPv4 and IPv6 and provides limitless potential use cases.

nccan show if you could reach a TCP port.

If not, some firewall is blocking the connectivity between these two systems.

Server and client model usingncworks flawlessly for these kinds of simple connectivity checks between hosts.

Any listening process working on TCP will directly respond toncTCP packets.

nchelp can be accessed usingnc -hcommand:

For more detailed information onnccommand, refer to its manual page.