The inetd daemon provides service management for a network. It reduces system load by invoking other daemons only when they are needed and by providing several simple Internet services internally without invoking other daemons.

After it has been started, the inetd daemon monitors network sockets for services listed in /etc/inetd.conf. That file tells the inetd daemon which services to support and how to handle service requests. When inetd receives a request on one of these sockets, it determines which service corresponds to that socket. Then it either handles the service request itself or invokes the appropriate server. For more information about the /etc/inetd.conf file, see the description of inetd in z/OS UNIX System Services Command Reference.

For z/OS UNIX, inetd handles rlogin, telnet, rsch, rexec, and others. It uses a configuration file in /etc/inetd.conf when handling the requests.