Telnet<-->Server Systems

The telnet program is actually a client, but it is not a client specifically designed for a MUD. Telnet/Server connections are very simple affairs from a coder's point of view. All one has to do is make a connection, then read from and write to it as desired.

Unfortunately, they are not the most efficient of systems. The telnet client does no more than pass on the strings sent by the MUD. If the MUD wants to send the same string repeatedly, it must actually send that string over the network N times. In addition, the player is usually limited to an xterm. Usually monochrome, although there are color xterms in existance. However, use of color over the network wastes even more bandwidth, since the MUD must send color tags to the player with each word/character it sends.

Telnet is currently the most common way to connect to MUDs. Most likely due to the fact that everyone is used to using telnet to get to their MUDs, and nobody has yet had the need to dream up something different. But to go much further, to transmit more data at higher speeds, we need a more efficient client.