ml> have you looked at the RFC that describes the telnet protocol?
 ml> it appears that RFC854 is the(?) one that covers telnet...

 ml> http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc854.html

following up on this, there seem to be several documents dealing with
telnet... you may also want to consider incorporating ssh into your design
as well... on the surface, it appears that you are creating a telnet server
for this job...

check out this other document, as well...

http://www.networksorcery.com/enp/protocol/telnet.htm

i found both by going to google and searching for "rfc telnet"
sans quotes...

)\/(ark