RE: telnet vs ssh on Core equipment , looking for reasons why ?

2) Your vendor's ssh authentication creates a secure connection, and transfers the password securely, only to then send the password, unencrypted, to an authentication server for verification, making ssh moot.

Less moot if a) The p/w contains one-time p/w components, or (if you like logging into your routers more often) b) You configure aaa to run over ip-sec (say), and fall back to console access which is either out of band, or contains one time passwords -- Alex Bligh Personal Capacity