+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #981751 +++

telnet is a very useful low level utility for debugging connections to mail or webservers or other such plain text services. 

A lot of services such as ping and traceroute offer means of forcing either IPv4 or IPv6. EG with traceroute you can add a -4 for explicit IPv4 or -6 or explicit IPv6 against a host. Or you can use traceroute6

Telnet doesn't offer that option so if I wanted to test to see if a mail server was working correctly with IPv6 there is no way I can force it to use IPv6. 

EG: I want to test the if the MX for the skymesh.com.au domain are accepting mail on IPv6 I would do the following:

$ dig skymesh.com.au mx

And get a list of MX records:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
skymesh.com.au.         70      IN      MX      500 mx1.skymesh.com.au.
skymesh.com.au.         70      IN      MX      500 mx1.skymesh.net.au.
skymesh.com.au.         70      IN      MX      500 mx2.skymesh.com.au.
skymesh.com.au.         70      IN      MX      500 mx2.skymesh.net.au.
skymesh.com.au.         70      IN      MX      500 mx3.skymesh.com.au.
skymesh.com.au.         70      IN      MX      500 mx3.skymesh.net.au.
skymesh.com.au.         70      IN      MX      500 mx4.skymesh.com.au.
skymesh.com.au.         70      IN      MX      500 mx4.skymesh.net.au.
skymesh.com.au.         70      IN      MX      500 mx5.skymesh.com.au.

And we find that mx1, mx2 and mx3 have IPv6 records

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
mx2.skymesh.com.au.     71      IN      A       180.181.128.97
mx2.skymesh.com.au.     73      IN      AAAA    2401:a400:100:dead::cafe:2
mx3.skymesh.com.au.     74      IN      A       180.181.128.131
mx3.skymesh.com.au.     74      IN      AAAA    2401:a400:100:dead::cafe:3
mx4.skymesh.com.au.     76      IN      A       180.181.192.10
mx5.skymesh.com.au.     81      IN      A       180.181.192.11
mx1.skymesh.com.au.     81      IN      A       180.181.128.96
mx1.skymesh.com.au.     82      IN      AAAA    2401:a400:100:dead::cafe:1

But I can't force IPv6:

$ telnet mx2.skymesh.com.au 25
Trying 180.181.128.97...
Connected to mx2.skymesh.com.au.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mx2.skymesh.com.au ESMTP (Debian/GNU)

I could try the IPv6 address directly:

$ telnet 2401:a400:100:dead::cafe:2 25
Trying 2401:a400:100:dead::cafe:2...
telnet: connect to address 2401:a400:100:dead::cafe:2: Network is unreachable

but in the case of testing something like a virtual http host we need to be able to actually specify the proper FQDN.

--- Additional comment from RHEL Product and Program Management on 2013-07-05 13:41:13 EDT ---

Since this bug report was entered in bugzilla and this package is
not scheduled to be updated in the current release, the release
flag has been set to ? to ensure that it is properly evaluated
for the next release.

--- Additional comment from RHEL Product and Program Management on 2013-10-13 19:24:40 EDT ---

This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for
inclusion in the current release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Because the affected component is not scheduled to be updated
in the current release, Red Hat is unable to address this
request at this time.

Red Hat invites you to ask your support representative to
propose this request, if appropriate, in the next release of
Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

--- Additional comment from Michal Sekletar on 2014-02-25 12:00:58 EST ---

Cloning against Fedora. Let's resolve it there first and then we can consider backporting for RHEL.