EEK! that's a big security hole you are digging. But i won't bog you down with why i think this is a bad idea.

Instead I will point you to SOAP::Lite. You could write a server that keeps a persistant connection (via SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Daemon) to a Net::Telnet session. The client would then call the server with a command and print the results back to the browser:

diagram:

-------------    -------------    ------------    ---------
|Net::Telnet|<-->|SOAP Daemon|<-->|web script|<-->|browser|
-------------    -------------    ------------    ---------
[download]

This is just a suggestion - i have not actually written anything like this myself . . . but i think this is definately do-able. The big question is - WHY!?! It's horribly unsafe!

jeffa