It's been around five years since this writer first came across Secure CommNet, which has proved to be a worthy replacement for the likes of Telix and Procomm - two dial-up terminal packages originally designed for DOS and, in later editions, Windows 3.1.

Although Telix and Procomm date back almost a decade, when an 80386 processor and 16Mb of RAM were a luxury, they were good for long past their sell-by date because of their small hardware footprints and the fact that they supported just about every file transfer protocol going. Sadly, whilst the two packages ran quite happily under Win 95, Win 98 introduced a number of serial port issues that the thriving community of shareware add-on developers never got round to.

Coupled with the need to support telnet sessions across a TCP/IP connection - i.e. the Internet - packages like Secure CommNet became invaluable. Not only was the shareware allowing users to try-before-they-buy, but the company also provided good support, as did a number of third-party developers.

Times moved on, and, by the latter part of the 1990s, Secure CommNet was into version 2.0, adding a number of 'bells and whistles', including support for a variety of extra file transfer protocols, as well as a wide range of terminal emulations that any tech-head could want.

In parallel with the development of Secure CommNet, the Internet moved on as well, introducing the possibility of remote access to just about every remote system around. Remote access with an ID and password might have been okay for the early-to-mid 1990s, but packet sniffers and other nasties mean that 'open' telnet sessions are a sure-fire way of allowing third-party access to your IDs and passwords.

This is why Secure CommNet was developed. Version 2.0, which we're looking at here, came out in August 2001 and offered all the features of the standard CommNet 2.0 - modem dial-up and Internet telnet sessions - as well as high-performance Z-modem and Y-modem. It does offer much more, though, as across SSH2 connections it supports TCP/IP port forwarding and a raft of encryption algorithms: AES256, Twofish, Blowfish, triple-DES, Arcfour and Cast-128.

Even more flexibly, the software supports ftp during standard and SSH2 telnet sessions. There's even a telnet host mode server that allows other users to link across the Internet to chat and transfer files securely. Impressive stuff. And, like good old Procomm and Telix, there's an internal scripting language to allow simple or complex remote applications to be developed.

This is important, as some users won't want to go to the expense of buying in specific remote communications software for their applications. They simply want the facility of allowing a small group of users to access a PC securely across the Internet or on modem dial-up, which is easily achieved using an encryption algorithm.

Secure CommNet won't replace ultra-secure commercial applications such as e-Sentrinet from Informer Systems (www.informer.co.uk) or SecurID from RSA Security (www.rsa.com). These were developed for interfacing with third-party security hardware, as well as coping with relatively complex hardware mixes. It has no such pretensions. It will work on a standalone PC and upwards, hooking into the Internet across a dial-up modem connection or a native telnet session, no matter what the underlying communications infrastructure is. It's not perfect, however. Introduce some fancy RADIUS-compliant hardware and you may have a configuration problem on your hands. For general secure telnet and dial-up sessions, however, it's ideal.

You'll find the software on just about every shareware search engine around, thanks to Radient's previous track record with its earlier versions, including the standard version of the software. At 2.7Mb long, the executable installation version is compact as communications package go these days, and runs quite happily on Windows 95 and upwards.

This writer installed the software on his humble, but tiny, Toshiba Libretto 120, a video cassette-size notebook with a Pentium 200 processor and 32Mb of memory. It worked, and worked well, which is no mean feat for a communications package of recent vintage under Windows 95. To get the best out of the application, however, you'll need more RAM - on the Libretto, the maximum memory is 64Mb and, in this environment, it executed flawlessly.

I wish I could say the same about the manual. For some reason, Radient only offers the manual as an Adobe PDF file for downloading. Even though the file is only a shade more than 260Kb long, the resultant file is still unwieldy. There are also only 16 pages in the manual, the first two of which contain the index and the usual copyright information. This presumes a lot of knowledge on the part of the user. In fact, even as an experienced telnet user and drawing on my communications packages' knowledge of more than two decades, I had difficulty understanding some of the terms in the documentation.

Radient charges a fairly modest $39 to register the package, but this is achieved via email, with the user tapping in the authorization code into the software to unlock it for use beyond the 30-day trial period. Unlike other popular shareware packages such as WinZip, there's no option to get a 'real' manual and a CD-ROM of installation software at an increased price. This isn't going to be very appealing to corporate users, let alone their managers and their staff.

Registered users, of course, have access to Radient's support services via phone and through its web site, but the support looks fairly basic. There's also no mention of the fact that Secure CommNet is backwards-compatible with earlier versions of the standard and secure editions, as well as no pointers to some of the sources of Secure CommNet scripts on the web. This is a bit like buying a car and then finding out that only one garage 'supports' the vehicle, and with no books on the subject.

Okay, comparing the purchase of a car and a $39 secure communications package is a little unfair. And maybe this writer was spoiled by the wealth of forums and developers available for Telix and Procomm a decade ago but, without access to those facilities for this product, it's difficult to see where its appeal will lie outside the 'tech' community of today.

Having said that, if you want to play around with a telnet package that supports a wide variety of software-based security technologies, and your IT manager is willing to help, this software could be a useful starting point.

SC On-Line
SC Magazine
www.scmagazine.com