PuTTY () is a
free and open-source terminal emulator
A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote term ...
,
serial console and network file transfer application. It supports several
network protocols, including
SCP,
SSH,
Telnet,
rlogin, and raw socket connection. It can also connect to a
serial port
A serial port is a serial communication Interface (computing), interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in Pa ...
. The name "PuTTY" has no official meaning.
PuTTY was originally written for
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
, but it has been
ported to various other
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
s. Official ports are available for some
Unix-like
A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...
platforms, with work-in-progress ports to and , and unofficial ports have been contributed to platforms such as
Symbian,
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDA). Designed to be the portable equivalent of the Windows desktop OS in the emerging Mobile device, mobile/port ...
and
Windows Phone.
PuTTY was written and is maintained primarily by
Simon Tatham, a British programmer.
Features
PuTTY supports many variations on the secure remote terminal, and provides user control over the
SSH encryption key and protocol version, alternate ciphers such as
AES,
3DES,
RC4,
Blowfish,
DES, and
public-key authentication. PuTTY uses its own format of key files – PPK (protected by ''Message Authentication Code'').
PuTTY supports
SSO through
GSSAPI, including user provided GSSAPI
DLLs. It also can emulate control sequences from
xterm
xterm is the standard terminal emulator for the X Window System. It allows users to run programs which require a command-line interface.
If no particular program is specified, xterm runs the user's Unix shell, shell. An X display device, dis ...
,
VT220,
VT102 or
ECMA-48
ANSI escape sequences are a standard for in-band signaling to control cursor location, color, font styling, and other options on video text terminals and terminal emulators. Certain sequences of bytes, most starting with an ASCII escape cha ...
terminal emulation, and allows local, remote, or dynamic
port forwarding with SSH (including
X11 forwarding). The network communication layer supports
IPv6
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communication protocol, communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic ...
, and the SSH protocol supports the
zlib@openssh.com delayed compression scheme. It can also be used with local serial port connections.
PuTTY comes bundled with command-line
SCP and
SFTP clients, called "pscp" and "psftp" respectively, and plink, a command-line connection tool, used for non-interactive sessions.
PuTTY does not support
session tabs directly, but many wrappers are available that do.
History
PuTTY development began in 1996, and was a usable SSH-2 client by October 2000.
Components
PuTTY consists of several components:
; PuTTY: the
Telnet,
rlogin, and
SSH client itself, which can also connect to a
serial port
A serial port is a serial communication Interface (computing), interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in Pa ...
; PSCP: an
SCP client, i.e. command-line secure file copy. Can also use
SFTP to perform transfers
; PSFTP: an
SFTP client, i.e. general file transfer sessions much like
FTP
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...
; PuTTYtel: a Telnet-only client
; Plink: a command-line interface to the PuTTY back ends. Usually used for
SSH Tunneling
; Pageant: an
SSH authentication agent for PuTTY, PSCP and Plink
; PuTTYgen: an
RSA,
DSA,
ECDSA and
EdDSA key generation utility
; pterm: (Unix version only) an X11 client which supports the same terminal emulation as PuTTY
See also
*
Comparison of SSH clients
*
Tera Term
*
mintty
*
WinSCP
*
minicom
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Putty
1998 software
Cross-platform free software
Cryptographic software
Free communication software
Free software programmed in C
Free terminal emulators
Portable software
Secure Shell
SSH File Transfer Protocol clients
Software using the MIT license
Symbian software
Telnet