4.2bsd with DEC terminal server

[Christopher A. Kent]

The discussion of a more efficient TELNET protocol seems to pop up
every six months or so; last time it was on TCP-IP. It's certainly
possible to do a protocol along the lines of what LAT does -- bunch up
characters for a time interval and send them as one packet, either a
TCP segment or a UDP datagram. The problem seems to arrive in wanting
to implement it in the kernel for efficiency (that's what we're after,
after all) and the fact that there are so many products out there that
won't understand the new protocol (how many commercial terminal muxes
speak rlogin?). 

A compromise approach seems to be to move TELNET into the kernel. This
would avoid all the context switches associated with the user-process
server (at least two per character, possibly more), and might cut down
on the TCP packets sent (because timing would be tighter, and ACKs
could be more easily piggybacked.)

chris
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