I know the diff between SSH and Telnet I m using telnet to port 22 to check if the SSH service is alive or not, and instead of givin me the telent prompt it throws me out, telnet localhost 22 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to hell-rules (127.0.0.1). Escape character is '^]'. SSH-1.99-OpenSSH_3.6.1p2 This is output from my CentOS system ....