Many of the articles I have found on this site do not come close to doing the required actions I've listed in my article.
Well given that some of them are technically impossible (as pointed out) ie encrypt your Telnet session that is perhaps not surprising. Actually there are examples of everything you want here and all over the web. Remote administration if not all that new you know. Unless you are on Win32.
Net::FTP will let you FTP in (one protocol with all its restrictions). Net::Telnet will let you telnet in and isssue arbitray commands. You need Net::Telnet if you can't use Net::SSH.
If you have to do 1700 boxen the simplest way to do it is to put up a web server, encrypt your ssh key with some decent algoritm that will be available on your boxen then stick the encrypted file in the server root. Then just telnet in, cd to the correct dir, use wget to pull the file down then decrypt it. Perhaps use wget to get ssh and then issue the commands to install it as well if need be. Perhaps use wget to pull (and Net::Telnet to issue the install commands) for Crypt::CBC and Crypt::Blowfish or similar so you can decrypt your ssh key using a perl command line call. Repeat ad infinitum.
If you have currently only been using Telnet to get into all your boxen and they have public Internet interfaces it is probable that at least one if not many are compromised. This is a significant issue due to the fact that when you use ssh keys for authentication your security is only as good as the weakest link. Compromise one box, compromise all.
If you read the docs for Net::Telnet you will find plenty of examples. In the examples section ;-) Seriously, the Net::Telnet docs are extensive.
cheers
tachyon
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