[butters]

Can anybody recommend a decent freeware Terminal Emulation software package? Currently using WRQ's Reflection at work which is a great program but I have been informed that we don't have a licence for this so it has to go.

Any suggestions would be most welcome as the bog standard package that we will have to use once we lose Reflection is appalling and will probably result in me Going Postal.

bluebrad

[slackline]

Can anybody recommend a decent freeware Terminal Emulation software package? Currently using WRQ's Reflection at work which is a great program but I have been informed that we don't have a licence for this so it has to go.

Any suggestions would be most welcome as the bog standard package that we will have to use once we lose Reflection is appalling and will probably result in me Going Postal.

bluebrad

What do you need to use/achieve?

If its just ssh/scp/sftp and so forth the PuTTy suite is pretty good.

One solution I used to get colleagues to use to connect to my GNU/Linux server was for them to install X/Cygwin which will, with the appropriate X forwarding provide a desktop login (although your intranet needs to be pretty fast for this to be a viable solution.

slack

[butters]

I am running telnet sessions to Cisco switches and applying configs, trouble shooting and the like - nothing major in the grand scheme of things just a lot of it. I need something fairly robust as the version built into Windows is just plain shonky being slow to respond, having a rubbish buffer and generally making my life far harder than I needs it to be.

Currently looking at TeraTerm at the minute on a recommendation but other suggestions are welcome.

bluebrad

[slackline]

I am running telnet sessions to Cisco switches and applying configs, trouble shooting and the like - nothing major in the grand scheme of things just a lot of it.

A "network switch" is a marketing name for a piece of hardware for connecting network devices and getting them to play together.  Cisco is the brand.  What operating system are they running?  Is it a customised distrobution from Cisco, some sort of *NIX environment, in which case which shell is being used?  What text editor are you using on the host that your connecting to, Vi(m)/Emacs/nano/pico/sed/something else?

I need something fairly robust as the version built into Windows is just plain shonky being slow to respond, having a rubbish buffer and generally making my life far harder than I needs it to be.

When you say robust, you presumably mean secure and responsive?  In which case you want to stop using telnet NOW, as it transmits the passwords over the network in plain text, which is exceptionally prone to snooping, and a VERY BAD IDEA (even if this is on an intranet).  Instead start using ssh, which if the host is running a *NIX variant it will invariably have the necessary daemon (a sshd process) running (you can check by typing 'ps -A | grep ssh' if its a *NIX variant that your using).  Buffering can be affected by the quality of the connection, and what the host your connecting to is doing, generally the client from which your connecting is the last thing to hold things up since all its doing is showing whats sent to it, which is invariably text.

PuTTy has excellent robust support for ssh sessions as does X/Cygwin (although if your not using any X display/devices then you won't need to install the Xorg server part of Cygwin).  99% of people I know who connect to servers over ssh use PuTTy when connecting from a windows client.  There are more recommendations on the ssh wiki page, including the TeraTerm you mentioned.

slack

[Bubba]

I just love SecureCRT, and it's sister SFTP tool, SecureFX.

Great software, but very expensive...so of course naughty versions can be had.

[butters]

Slack--line

Thanks for the reply, I should point out that am a network engineer so all I need to do is log onto the Cisco switch itself to configure it - whatever is plugged into that switch re: OS etc. is of little concern to me other than configuring the port relevant to that device.

What I need is something responsive and robust - currently a lot of my work is applying access lists (cut and paste basically) and what I am looking for is a client that doesn't crash when thrown more than 20 lines of code at once. I will have a look at PuTTy (which I have used in the distant past) and check out the other suggestions on the Wiki as well.

bluebrad

[butters]

Great software, but very expensive...so of course naughty versions can be had.

Its for work so has to be legit but thanks anyway Bubba...

bluebrad

[slackline]

Slack--line

Thanks for the reply, I should point out that am a network engineer so all I need to do is log onto the Cisco switch itself to configure it - whatever is plugged into that switch re: OS etc. is of little concern to me other than configuring the port relevant to that device.

Fair enough, you no doubt know more about it than me (my networking experience extends to home networks with wired/wireless routers and getting Linux computers up and running on University networks), but doesn't the switch itself have to be running some software (i.e. OS and routing software such as iptables etc.) so that it can handle the devices that are connected to each of the ports (even if these are embedded systems)?  Its this that your connecting to to do the configuration no? So knowing what its running and how it handles terminal sessions will be useful in optimising your connection?

What I need is something responsive and robust - currently a lot of my work is applying access lists (cut and paste basically) and what I am looking for is a client that doesn't crash when thrown more than 20 lines of code at once. I will have a look at PuTTy (which I have used in the distant past) and check out the other suggestions on the Wiki as well.

Are you copying and pasting from your client into a text-editor that is running on the terminal you have connected with?  If so it may be down to the editor that your using (in my experience I find nano doesn't handle this as well as say emacs, and vim's just a pain in the arse).

If its that key to your work, why are your employers so reluctant to fork out some cash for the responsive and robust software that you desire?  As well as Bubba's suggestion I've used eXceed in the past, its mainly geared towards GUI/X-sessions, but has command line tools as well.

No offence intended, but if they won't stump up for licensed software then thats pretty cheap-skate, they've invested in the hardware, but not the software required to maintain it!  Poor planning in the business model/budget there, they could easily have looked into the free/open-source solutions when considering the hardware and if none of the available options were satisfactory they could have budgeted for purchasing the software your now being told you can't use.

Hope you find a solution, peace (man ),

slack

[butters]

Fair enough, you no doubt know more about it than me (my networking experience extends to home networks with wired/wireless routers and getting Linux computers up and running on University networks), but doesn't the switch itself have to be running some software (i.e. OS and routing software such as iptables etc.) so that it can handle the devices that are connected to each of the ports (even if these are embedded systems)?  Its this that your connecting to to do the configuration no? So knowing what its running and how it handles terminal sessions will be useful in optimising your connection?

The switch itself will be running some variation of the Cisco OS - I don't pretend to be any sort of expert in the field but my take on it is that it is a relatively limited instruction OS and as you point out it is this that we are connected to and working on. The problem is not so much the connection between the two as the client that is used to do this. As I mentioned we have been using Reflections but as that is apparently unlicensed we will be forced into using the version of telnet built into Windows if we can not find a suitable free alternative and while the version built into Windows might well be suitable for once a month usage it is complete crap for what we do.

No offence intended, but if they won't stump up for licensed software then thats pretty cheap-skate, they've invested in the hardware, but not the software required to maintain it!  Poor planning in the business model/budget there, they could easily have looked into the free/open-source solutions when considering the hardware and if none of the available options were satisfactory they could have budgeted for purchasing the software your now being told you can't use.

Welcome to the world of working for a large IT out sourcing company that specialises in Government contracts - they do not spending money well and in this instance the only problem is that there is some unlicensed software which must be removed. The solution to this problem is obviously to remove the software but any fall out to us caused by taking this course of action is not their immediate problem and doesn't directly affect them (unless I kill their network connections in a fit of spite) so solutions tend to get sorted out in a more maverick fashion (rather like this really). 

Regardless from the little bit of investigation I have done either TeraTerm or PuTTy will do the job OK and hopefully will keep the fools happy.

Hope you find a solution, peace (man ),

I have Where there's a will there's a way - always was and always will be. 

bluebrad

[slackline]

Cool, glad you've found an alternative.  Sounds like the "soliders" have to do the shitty work when the "generals" have fucked up the planning.

Cisco bought out Linksys, the later used embedded/customised GNU/Linux distributions (and the terms of the GPL were forced to release the sourcecode, from which various opensource alternatives have sprung up a la OpenWRT and Unslung and their ilk).  Wouldn't be too much of a surprise if  embedded/customised GNU/Linux is used in the Cisco switch (might even be Linksys/Cisco product anyway).  These tend to use stripped down sets of command tools like busybox which contains a lot of the common commands in one binary with a small memory foot-print or dropbear which is a light-weight ssh daemon.

I'd have thought that having a decent set of tools such as client software would have been a pre-requisite for a large IT company but I appreciate that you've got to work with what you've got.

Anyway, still strongly recommend using ssh (preferably ssh2) instead of telnet for security issues with the later (its not only the password thats not encrypted but all data sent over the connection!).

slack