Q. Why would I want to run these daemon services on my home or small office computer?
A. These services are useful for retrieving information needed on irregular occurences.

Q. What are the advantages of administrating my PC with Telnet instead of an application like Symantec's PC Anywhere?
A. Symantec's PC Anywhere requires the software to be installed on both machines to work. Telnet is available on all modern operating systems.

Software Required:
Software Desired:

FTP (port 21):
     WarFTP is a free application and may be the best Windows based FTP daemon. Serve-U-FTP is also a nice application but is not free and does not offer the more advanced security control of WarFTP.

Telnet (port 23):
     The GoodTech Systems telnetd application is a great product. The Fictional Telnet application is nice too (it is free) but does have limitations.

     Telnetd will allow you to run dos based applications such as edit.exe which require additional user input once executed. Fictional Telnet can only run command line operations and does not work well with STDOUT redirects and pipes. The telentd application also runs as a system service at boot and is transparent in the Windows environment. Fictional Telnet will run in the system tray which is a nice feature as well.

CyberKit:
     CyberKit is a Winsock application that allows the user to Ping, Traceroute, Finger, WhoIs, NS LookUp, and QoD commands. This software is great for maintaining an dialup connection with it's 'send keep-alive messages'. The software is postcardware (send postcard=free) and runs minimized in the system tray.

NetLaunch:
     NetLanch is a DUN management application. NetLaunch will connect to the internet on specified events and launch specified applications once connected. NetLaunch will also disconnect on specified events. This software will also 'reconnect' your connection in the event you are disconnected from your ISP.

ConSeal Firewall:
     ConSeal Firewall prevents unauthorized port access on Windows machines. This application will add an extra measure of security for computers running these services and have their addresses broadcasted into the public domain. If you don't plan to give out your computer address, this really is not necessary.

Dynamic DNS:
     The Dynamic DNS service allows you to have your own domain in the format of [userid.]dyndns.org. There are applications available for Windows, Linux, Solaris, etc. which update the dyndns.org server of any IP address change. This makes your computer universally accessible under the domain [userid.]dyndns.org. This implementation is also when you may want to consider the ConSeal Firewall application.

Overview:

     With a daemon service running, the computer will establish a PPP connection. The service will be available on the service port at the address assigned by your ISP's DHCP server (IP address).

     For unattended services, all the other application come into the picture. Your computer will automatically dial at startup by configuring the 'start up' folder with the NetLaunch application. NetLaunch (on startup) will launch the PPP connection, CyberKit, and the DynDNS application.

     CyberKit will maintain the stagnant connection with it's keep-alive messages, NetLaunch will reconnect in the event you are disconnected. DynDNS will update your [userid.]dyndns.org account of any IP address changes when NetLaunch redials your connection.

     In the event of an electrial outage, the computer will restart once power is restored and all these services will be re-opened. You may never know the power was off if you were not at home.

     To start the PC without these services running, hold the [SHIFT] key until Windows' 'hour-glass' becomes an arrow. Holding the [SHIFT] key when Windows boots, prevents all items in the start-menu from executing.

     I have other things in the start menu that need to run at boot so I actually implement an entirely different way of managing my system boot. I will give a quick summary below for more advanced users.

     When my PC boots, I don't use the Windows' Logo. I have a batch file draw out a Specialized Systems ASCII logo. This enables interactive boot menus and environment settings to be enabled. One setting I have in my autoexec.bat file is an option to set an environment variable representing the status of the user at boot-time. If I am present when my computer boots, I press an option that tells the command/e: environment that I am present and that it should not run the services (I can run them myself if needed). If I am not present, the variable is set [unattend=1] this means the unattended state is true. In my start menu, I have a batch file shortcut which runs my startup.bat batch file which will execute if the unattend variable is true, otherwise the batch file terminates.
AUTOEXEC.BAT:

STARTUP.BAT (called via Windows startup folder):