The following notes from the UNIX.AIX.faq_2 may make arrow keys work more reliably over a network... Peter Jeffe also notes: >the escape sequences for cursor and function keys are *sometimes* >treated as several characters: eg. the getch() - call does not return >KEY_UP but 'ESC [ C.' You're correct in your analysis: this has to do with the timing of the escape sequence as it arrives from the net. There is an environment variable called ESCDELAY that can change the fudge factor used to decide when an escape is just an escape. The default value is 500; boosting this a bit should solve your problems.