Telnet addressing

When a telnet address is used, information can only be rertrieved using an interactive telnet session. This has the disadvantage that information cannot be indexed, searched, etc automatically, nor can it be gatewayed into other systems. The telnet addressing form is used to allow a pointer to information systems such as library information systems which have not been gatewayed into the web properly yet.

The syntax is, with [] indicating optional parts (see full BNF)

user

is the optional name of the user to be used for login. If the username is omitted, then so must be the "@" sign. This is equivalent to the argument used with the -l option on the ucb telnet command. When the username is omitted, some access servers will prompt for a username and password.

host

This is the name of the server in internet form. A numeric form (e.g. 128.141.201.74) may be used, by the domain name form (e.g. info.cern.ch) is preferred. The host is mandatory.

port

This is a numeric port number. If a non-numeric string is used, it must be a defined service name. Note that as there is no central repository for service names (they are defined locaaly for each host), a service name is NOT an appropriate way to specify a port number for a hypertext address. If the port number is omitted the preceding colon must also be omitted. In this case, port number 23 is assumed.