Whether you set the system property programatically or on the command line, it will be set for all Remoting clients and servers in the JVM. Currently, this is the only option. I've created a JIRA issue JBREM-764 (http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBREM-764) to make the wire format configurable per client or server. In the meantime, one workaround would be to fiddle with the telnet client. The Apache Jakarta Commons Net project, for example, has support for telnet, and the synopsis at http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/net/ says anonymous wrote : | Our philosophy is to make the global functionality of a protocol accessible (e.g., TFTP send file and receive file) when possible, but also provide access to the fundamental protocols where applicable so that the programmer may construct his own custom implementations (e.g, the TFTP packet classes and the TFTP packet send and receive methods are exposed). | By the way, not all services in the Application Server use Remoting. EJB3, JBossMessaging, and JBoss Web Services (but just for SOAP clients) are services that do use Remoting. If you don't use those, then you should be OK. Moreover, while I suspect that JBossMessaging wouldn't work with an older wire format, I'm not sure that the other services would notice. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4059696#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...