Is it possible to make a web-based telnet service?

I use ASP.NET MVC with C# for web development and I am curious about creating a web-based telnet server. I've actually never done anything with telnet, but I'm fairly certain I understand the basics of it as a simple protocol. Do I need to be running an application listening on a port to establish a socket connection with a client, or does telnet also operate in a request/response format so that it could talk to an MVC-style web service instead of an actual running server program listening on a port.

Let me know if I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. 开发者_StackOverflowI really just need pointed in the right direction.

Keep in mind that I am talking about a telnet server, not a client.

Thanks in advance.

You can either create a telnet server, or a telnet client. But where is web in it? I can't see it. If you really want to make a server, you can simply make a telnet server and you don't need the web.

If you want to make a telnet client on a web page, it makes sense. Users will use their web browser, and your application will act as a bridge between the real telnet and web browsers. Your application will act as a telnet client on one side and transfer all data to and from human user using web pages. It is a real time thing so I would prefer client code for this, like Silverlight, where IMO you can achive quite good result.

You can telnet to a web server and interact with it over HTTP, but you can't make the server behave like a telnet server unless you bind to a different port and run telnet over that port. At that point the fact that your hosting it in a web server is pretty superfluous though, so I'm not sure why you would do that.