NCSA telnet doesn't work with path MTU discovery enabled. This is due to a bug in NCSA that also stops it working with other modern networking code such as Solaris. The following information is courtesy of Marek There is a fixed version somewhere on ftp.upe.ac.za (sorry, I don't remember the exact pathname, and this site is very slow from here). It may or may not be faster for you to get it from ftp://ftp.ists.pwr.wroc.pl/pub/msdos/telnet/ncsa_upe/tel23074.zip (source is in v230704s.zip). I have tested it with 1.3.79 (with path mtu discovery enabled - ncsa 2.3.08 didn't work) and it seems to work. I don't know if anyone is working on this code - this version is over a year old. Too bad - it's faster and often more stable than these windoze telnets, and runs on almost anything...