A lot of folks (even in the CE team) don't realize that Windows CE has a telnet server as an optional component.  This is not something that we see you putting in shipping devices.  It is a very cool tool during your initial development of your platform, however.

If your device is hooked up to platform builder (PB) via a debug connection, you can use the target shell of course.  But I prefer telnet server.  Telnet is just a wrapper around CE's cmd.exe.  CE's cmd has builtin file manipulation commands like WinXP cmd, including the capability to do file redirection and run .bat files.  You can also write your own apps that call wprintf() or scanf() and have them interact across a telnet session.  IPConfig, ping, etc... are tools that are command line based.  Yes, you can run them with a '-d' to have the output redirected to the debug console.  But I find it easier using the standard telnet than having to look at all the windows in PB.  Further, if your device isn't hooked up to PB then you're out of luck on that front.

OK I'm biased here since I wrote the telnet server :).  But most people that start using it don't go back..

To get telnet server, add it to your development only platform.  It's SYSGEN_TELNETD.  There are security concerns with any telnet server, so REMOVE IT BEFORE RTM'ng your platform unless you have a very very good reason not to.  If you want to be lazy (development only!) and remove the password check then add these registry entries.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\COMM\TELNETD]
    "UseAuthentication"=dword:0
    "IsEnabled"=dword:1

Happy telneting.  Oh, and if it isn't clear already, this isn't something you probably want to ship.

[Author: John Spaith]