note
ncw
The telnet port probably isn't opening properly because you
aren't completing the telnet negotiation sequence. I don't know whether you are familiar with this
but it involves sending small cryptic binary messages to the server
to negotiate with the client what options they both support.
I wrote a C program to do this a while back - it just NAKed all
the options the server sent it.<P>
I discovered that some servers won't start up at all unless you
perform the negotiation (Linux telnetd is one) whereas others are quite
happy for you to charge in there ignoring the negotiation.<P>
You could write the code for this, but as you've noted it is a
bit of a pain. However you've got several other options.<P>
<UL>
<LI>Investigate [CPAN://Net::Telnet] to negotiate for you
<LI>Investigate [CPAN://IO::Socket] to make your connections
and in particular the timeout parameter so you know when the connections have failed
<LI>Learn how to make nonblocking sockets [The Perl Cookbook] will help here.
<LI>Set an alarm - you could use my [Perl Syntax for enforcing time limits|time limit] module for instance.
</UL>
TIMTOWDI of course!
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