Use Your Telnet Client to Retrieve a Web Page Using HTTP

Telnet is a remote terminal service used on the Internet. It's use has declined lately, but it is a very useful tool to study the Internet. In Windows find the default telnet program. It may be located in the Windows directory named telnet.exe. When opened, pull down the Terminal menu and select Preferences. In the preferences window, check Local Echo. (This is so you can see your HTTP request when you type it.) Now pull down the Connection menu and select Remote System. Enter www.google.com for the Host Name and 80 for the Port. (Web servers usually listen on port 80 by default.) Press Connect. Now type

GET / HTTP/1.0

and press Enter twice. This is a simple HTTP request to a web server for it's root page. You should see a web page flash by and then a dialog box should pop up to tell you the connection was lost. If you'd like to save the retrieved page, turn on logging in the Telnet program. You may then browse through the web page and see the HTML that was used to write it.