Thanks for the example, that was just what I needed =) I think it also showed a bug in telnet.rb as a Timeout of 'nil' in the waitfor doesn't appear to affect anything: after a few seconds of nonactivity my connection will close, but since I have absolutely no need of this check I simply removed it from telnet.rb (another approach might have been to wrap the waitfor in a begin). -- this is forwarded by matz, the list admin.