depending on your network configuration, you may have trouble telnetting to the standby. here are some issues i've had in the past with this:

1. the standby doesn't get routing updates, so if you're using a dynamic routing protocol and are not on the same lan as the interface you're telnetting to, you wont get there.

2. if you use external authentication for admin access, and 1. above exists, you won't get there if the auth server is more than one hop away - that's what fall back authen. is for (local database).