Steven asks:

> Please excuse the non 3000 question but the knowledge here is 2nd to none.
I
> just moved a couple of HP-UX servers from Camarillo Calif. to Melbourne
> Florida and now that the activity on the server is picking up to a normal
> production load the keyboard latency is causing the users some problems.
> Does anyone know if Advance Telnet is on HP-UX or if there is a way to
> set local echo on so the latency is not an issue?  By the way we are
> running 10.20 and the application is not a GUI app.

"Advanced telnet" consists on only two parts, one is the standard mechanism
of suppressing echo on the host (telnet option 1: DONT ECHO) so that
characters can be echoed to the screen locally as soon as they're typed, thus
eliminating the latency Steven speaks of, and the other is a signalling
mechanism sent from the host to the client terminal to suppress the local
echoing of passwords (telnet option 45: SUPPRESS LOCAL ECHO). Without Option
45, you will see your passwords as you type them simply because everything is
being now locally echoed as you type.

Although it's extremely simple to implement "advanced telnet" on a host, it
isn't in HP-UX yet. Worse (actually much worse), the ECHO command seems to be
broken on HP-UX and Linux at the moment. It was in working order in the past,
but apparently someone wrote a modification to the telnet server code and
fouled the telnet echo option. And worse yet, this code is apparently
spreading virus-like through the open systems/open source user community.

If your version of HP-UX is old enough, you can actually simulate the
"advanced telnet" operation yourself, without any modifications to the host's
telnet software, once you get past any sort of code that modulates the echo
state on the host (password entry, terminal status checking, etc.). Once
you're well signed on, simply go to the Connection Settings menu of QCTerm
and switch your setting from "standard" to "advanced". Doing this will put
you into immediate (local) echoing of the characters that you type and
simultaneously put the host into a DONT ECHO state.

However, once you do this, if you are now getting doubly echoed characters,
it means that your version of HP-UX has the error in it and host echoing was
not suppressed as QCTerm requested/required it to be. In that case, the only
thing to do is complain to the head-UNIX-weenie-in-charge about the problem.
My problem is that I haven't the slightest idea who that is at the moment,
but I am trying to track him or her down with Mark Bixby's help.

This is a fundamental error in the code and one that should never have
happened, but even worse, it seems to be spreading among the various UNIXes.
I would appreciate knowing if you see double echoing when you go to the
"advanced" setting. If so, your results represent one more data point in
trying to determine at what point the error crept in.

Wirt Atmar

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