[Mark Rejhon]

For everyone of those who are trying out various telnet clients on the market (midpssh, Idokorro), definitely include MobileSSH Version 2.0 as it includes a free trial and I feel it has been well worth my purchase last year. It just came out this week, with lots of new features including color support, IBM5250 support, etc.

I have posted a more detailed message (What's New, etc)
http://www.blackberryforums.com/showthread.php?t=4865


(upgrade download or free trial)

This is the software that I use that makes it possible for me to make relay calls to MCI Wireless Relay (as I'm hearing impaired. I use telnet://wireless.ip-relay.com:2510 for this). Also allows me to access my Linux system at home, so it is one of the most important software programs that has come out for BlackBerry, for me. The performance improvements makes real-time chatting even easier. There's no lag at all in Local Input mode anymore, and Local Input is even editable in a splitscreen with the terminal view. Even the formerly-dreaded immediate transmit mode has improved too ("Disabled Local Input"), it no longer ever lags by more than 2-3 seconds maximum on my GPRS BlackBerry (latency limitation of GPRS), even if I type extremely fast at my usual 50-70 WPM during immediate input mode. I remember that until now, all telnet clients I've tested out tended to have worse lag. Makes my ability to make relay calls even easier. I also like the new CTRL key shortcut (And ALT key shortcut), makes operations in emacs/joe/vi so much easier, and bash shell command line editing too.

I remember the day that this software used to be priced higher. Now it's finally the same price as my registered copy of Vandyke's SecureCRT desktop PC client (which I paid $99 for too). Just in case some of you didn't know the price was dropped this year!

[A Mini-Disclaimer: Idokorro is also a sponsor of BlackBerryForums. In addition to this, Idokorro is my employer as of March 6th, 2005 (Software Developer!) though I have been a longtime pre-existing user of this software. I'm posting this message as myself on my own initiative, rather than on Idokorro's behalf, and may contain personal opinions of my own. Just so you know!]

[gocyclones]

I'm going to toss in my 2 cents here too. We've currently got SonicAdmin from another vendor to use for ssh connectivity and it is horrible. Emulations is all messed up and slow. The reason that we've got to use it is that our security department is requiring us to use RSA SecureID as a form of two factor authentication. I downloaded the new demo version of MobileSSH and it works great so far. The only thing I'm going to have troubles with is not having the two factor authentication (SonicAdmin has a server process that runs on the BES that handles all of the connections I think.)

So just a quick - Looks good from me...

[Mark Rejhon]

gocyclones,

MobileSSH has the advantage of not requiring a server; however, that's not your only choice -- there's a way to do MobileSSH via a server:

If you need a form of authentication through your BES, you may wish to try Idokorro MobileAdmin. You can have two layers of encryption with it (SSL/TLS encryption through the existing BES/MDS encrypted tunnel). MobileAdmin supports RSA SecureID.

On top of the Windows/Novell/BES/etc administration features, it also includes Mobile Terminal (a clone of MobileSSH) that requires the MobileAdmin server to work. This can allow you to monitor all the connections coming from the BlackBerries on the field, through full logging, if you need full auditing of all your telnet/SSH connections even to non-Intranet hosts, etc.

MobileAdmin's "Mobile Terminal" feature does not yet have the MobileSSH 2.0 codebase yet, however MobileAdmin's own "Mobile Terminal" feature should eventually have all the features from MobileSSH 2.0 (such as color and 5250). Essentially, MobileAdmin is kind of a massively expanded superset of MobileSSH since MobileAdmin already includes Mobile Terminal.

All software MobileAdmin, Mobile Terminal, and MobileSSH can be installed simultaneously on a BlackBerry (this also gives the advantage of multitasking two telnet/SSH sessions simultaneously too, by running MobileSSH and Mobile Terminal simultaneously!). I am sure that if you are a fully paid MobileAdmin customer, Idokorro would be happy to include a registration of MobileSSH 2.0 if you need the extra features of the MobileSSH 2.0 at least until Mobile Terminal has all the features of MobileSSH 2.0.

Hope this helps. Anyway, please note, I am going from my memory and am posting on my own behalf, not on Idokorro's behalf -- To confirm, you may wish to go through official channels via contacting Idokorro.

[Mark Rejhon]

I just got a heads up within, that MobileSSH supports RSA SecureID authentication if you turn this on in the UNIX SSH server. (OpenSSH can be patched to use SecureID, if I remember right). This is a very new feature, please contact Idokorro if there are any issues getting this working.

This will shortly be ported into the Mobile Terminal (a feature of MobileAdmin), so that you can go through the BES and through a MobileAdmin server, in order to have full auditing of all Mobile Terminal (telnet/SSH) usage.