Wojciech Puchar wrote:

Well, that's true, but if you have the choice, there are better choices. You *can* hammer in nails with the butt of a gun, but there's a chance you'll somehow shoot yourself in the arm. A hammer doesn't have that risk.

There have been *many* problems over the years with rsh and telnet. rsh's security model comes from a time when people thought computers would never lie to each other. SSH does allow you to give only enough access, with the side-benefits (in your case) of compression and encryption. Even if you used ssh without those, the key-based authentication is still safer, and the code more modern and securely designed.