Technical communities are paying attention to a new wave of industrial network hardware, and procurement teams are watching which products manufacturers released this year. When comparing industrial routers, the usual metrics are 5G/4G throughput, serial port count, VPN protocol support, and operating temperature — all easy to read from a spec sheet. One metric tends to surface only after deployment: whether the management channel itself is secure. Routers sit at field sites for years, and remote command-line login is how configuration changes, firmware tweaks, and troubleshooting get done without a site visit. At that point the question is unavoidable: SSH or Telnet?
Most industrial routers offer three management access options:
From the administrator's point of view, Telnet and SSH do the same job: reach the device shell remotely and run commands. The difference sits in the transport. Telnet dates from a time when sending credentials across a public network was not part of the design picture. Usernames, passwords, and every command typed into a Telnet session travel as plaintext. Put a packet capture tool on the path for a short while, and the session can be replayed in full; the tooling and tutorials for this are widely available. SSH negotiates an encrypted channel first and only then transmits credentials and commands. At the same point on the wire, only ciphertext appears. SSH also supports key-based authentication, which removes the password from the login exchange entirely — a practical option for unattended field devices.
The decision does not require a security expert:
Telnet is not dangerous by itself, and many industrial devices still ship it as an option, often because it is simple and inexpensive to implement. On a fully isolated maintenance network that no other traffic shares, it can be low-risk. The problem appears the moment the management plane touches a shared or remotely reachable network — which is exactly how field-site routers are deployed. The safe default is therefore: SSH on, Telnet off, management sources restricted, and the whole management path wrapped in a tunnel or a management platform.
These practices apply across brands and models. Changing a management port from its default value adds little on its own — port obscurity is not security — so it should never replace encryption, strong passwords, or source restrictions. On the device itself, the checks come down to two: whether each management protocol can be disabled independently, and whether the firewall can restrict which sources may reach the management ports.
① Can management protocols be turned off or swapped?Take the USR-G806w industrial router from PUSR as an example. The official documentation lists its network management methods as SSH, Web, Telnet, plus a network management platform. That matters during deployment: Telnet can be switched off, routine maintenance can run over SSH or the Web interface, and bulk operations across many units can go through the management platform. The choice stays with the network team instead of being locked in by a device that only ships with a plaintext channel.
② Is the management entry backed by a firewall?The same documentation for the G806w describes a firewall covering NAT, access control, DDoS protection, and IP-MAC binding, with SNMP and VLAN also supported. Access control defines which IP addresses can reach the management ports; IP-MAC binding blocks clients that spoof addresses. On the link side, PPTP, L2TP, IPSec, OpenVPN, and GRE are available, so maintenance traffic can dial into a tunnel before any login attempt reaches the router. The platform route is covered as well: PUSR's management platform provides remote access to the router's built-in web page without opening ports to the internet. Hardware-wise, the G806w operates from -20°C to 70°C, mounts on a DIN rail or a wall, and carries dual hardware-and-software watchdog protection. It also supports cellular, wired, and Wi-Fi uplinks with automatic failover between them, which matters when a site loses its primary link and the router still has to answer remote maintenance sessions. Several PUSR models have earned the EU EN 18031 cybersecurity standard certification, which speaks to the security baseline of the product line.
Sites that need higher bandwidth can look at the 5G model USR-G816. It pairs a Qualcomm quad-core processor with an X62 5G modem and operates from -35°C to 75°C. On the management side, the administrator password is configurable and the HTTP port can be changed from its default; the firewall includes port forwarding, DMZ, traffic rules, and access restrictions. VPN support covers PPTP, L2TP, and OpenVPN in both client and server roles, and remote maintenance can be performed through the PUSR cloud platform or a VPN rather than by exposing the management port publicly. This class fits deployments where 5G bandwidth must carry production traffic and remote maintenance at the same time.
Between SSH and Telnet there is little to weigh: one is plaintext, the other encrypted, and routine remote maintenance should pick the latter. More valuable than the protocol debate is auditing the device's default exposure — whether plaintext services can be disabled, whether management ports can be source-restricted, and whether remote login travels inside an encrypted tunnel or through a management platform. Putting those items on the procurement checklist, alongside throughput and serial ports, is what makes an industrial router remotely configurable and defensible from day one.
