alternatives to telent
 

a big part of my job is starting processes on different hosts. I would like to automate this - at least the telent part. Telneting to 20 different hosts in a row entering in the same id and password is time consuming.

Writing shell scripts which preload the id and password is difficult.
is there an alternative to using telnet - wouls ssh work?

Are there alternatives to telnet?

Use ssh and you can authenticate using public/private key from a central bastion host. That should serve the purpose.