I\'ve got a terminal server set up in a data center that also serves as a consol

Question

I've got a terminal server set up in a data center that also serves as a console server. This console server only accepts regular telnet requests. To this server are a bunch of routers and switches connected with console cables. For example, to connect to a router I telnet to the server's public IP-address and a port. I need this action to be taken place from the webbrowser: telnet://ip-address which will open an external terminal application on my PC.

It is not unknown that telnet is an incredible nonsecure communication protocol. My question therefore is: how do I telnet to my console server via a webbrowser in a secure way? If I force my webserver to do this via HTTPS, will this be secure enough?

Explanation / Answer

If the webserver is running on the same box as the telnet system (or directly connected on a physically secure connection), then you could safely relay information to the webserver and have it relay it, via telnet, to the system that you want to talk to. The important thing to realized, however, is that your communication is only protected between your system and the webserver. The web server's connection is still unencrypted and open to being snooped on unless that network is under your control and otherwise protected.

If this provides sufficient security for you, an alternate (and possibly easier) approach would be to setup a simple VPN to the network and allow telnet traffic over the VPN. VPN is more natively designed for this kind of forwarding and can be configured to encrypt traffic. It would allow you to use a telnet client of your choice on your PC instead of having to use some funky web based interface.

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