How does one browse a website using Telnet?
When you connect to an open port 80 (HTTP) through Telnet, shouldn't the client display a plaintext version of the site? All I get is a blank screen, and then the client disconnects. I know you can use lynx to browse the web in a command-line interface, but I'd like to know why Telnet can't do the exact same thing. Thank you very much!
21 Answer
When you use Telnet, you're opening an almost raw TCP connection to the server. This means that you have to make HTTP requests like your browser does to get the information that you need.
Try this:
> telnet google.com 80You should get an empty window with a blinking cursor at the top. Now type this in:
GET / HTTP/1.1and press Enter twice to send the line and end the request with an empty line. You won't be able to see what you're typing, though, because the server is not echoing back what you're typing (but the Telnet client moves the cursor for you).
You should get your response in HTML. Extra points if you can save it to a file and open it in a browser.
So then, what's Lynx? Lynx does exactly what your browser does: send requests, get the response, parse the HTML, and show it to the user. But this is all done in a command-line interface, which makes it difficult to align objects and format them correctly.
Telnet, on the other hand, just handles the requesting and responding part, which is why only crazy people browse the Web with just Telnet.
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