What is PuTTY?

PuTTY is an open source application that supports multiple network protocols, such as - SSH, Telnet, SCP, rlogin, serial port and raw socket connection. PuTTY communication is established over a TCP/IP socket, such as TTY, but it uses the secure socket with public key encryption. A typed command is sent and received a text response.

Although the word "PuTTY" has no definitive meaning, 'TTY' is the name for a terminal in the Unix tradition. PuTTY which is still a beta software was originally developed by Simon Tatham for Microsoft Windows, but over the years it has been ported to several other OS as well.

PuTTY has some significant features:

- PuTTY supports multiple variations on the secure remote terminal.
- It provides control over the SSH encryption key and protocol version.
- It stores hosts and preferences for later usage.
- Command line SCP and SFTP clients.
- Emulate control sequences from xterm, VT102 or ECMA-48 terminal emulation.
- It allows remote, local or dynamic port forwarding with SSH.
- Used with local serial port connections.

Define Putty

Developed and maintained by a British programmer Simon Tatham in 1999, Putty is an open-source application that makes use of network protocols such as Telnet and rlogin to facilitate a remote session on a computer. Often employed in text-based communication, Putty is used for connecting to Linux servers from Microsoft OS-based computer systems.

Putty can be regarded as an xterm terminal for most of the purposes. It specifies its terminal type as xterm to the server. Features such as public keys and port forwarding can be made available on the application through the command line. The main window of this application has a session that runs directly on the remote computer. It is this session that helps run commands on a remote computer.

The application makes use of a random number seed file that mitigates the unpredictability of random data. You can customize the application to have cut and paste features similar to xterm. Compared to xterm, Putty offers a number of advantages. It is more stable as well as easier to configure. It is also more convenient to work with as you can restore a remote session as soon as internet connection is restored after an interruption.

In addition, the software comes with an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI). It also supports many variations of the remote terminal. In fact, it supports several terminal control sequences that xterm is unable to. While it does not support session tabs directly, you can accomplish the same by means of wrappers.

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