I seem to remember that most companies at the time were focused in one area. IPX/SPX networked play, fully ignoring tcp/ip play. Meaning programs like idoom/ifrag(including kali), TEN, along with mplayer allowed a functioning overlay for the internet, and or other methods of net access in the early internet darkages. When windows sway wasn't in full bloom, and competing versions of dos still existed.
These programs also specialized specifically in non-tcp/ip play which was the dominate protocol because TS/WS hadn't built into the marketshare for the most part in the early days, and later MS's TCP/IP handler sucked monkey balls, and most used a ipx/tcp emulation layer for internet communication because ipx was still superior in latency. Most of this didn't really change until windows98 came out and effectively killed off the old overlay system, the crap of win95, and all that. People will still gaming in various dosmodes right up until '98, give or take a bit because of two things. Memory limits, and the way memory was handled by win95.
Well then again, this was back in the day when people knew what telnet was, and wasn't just for connecting to your router/printer/etc device.
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"For every human problem,
there is a neat, simple solution;
and it is always wrong."
--H.L. Mencken