Tunneling using PuTTY

Tunneling allows you to forward a connection over one computer to another computer. It’s useful for privacy reasons (and for avoiding the proxy scanner on certain IRC servers) because the connection seems to be coming from a computer other than yours. In order to set up a tunnel, you’ll need an SSH account (short for Secure SHell) on another computer (called an SSH server) and an SSH client. This guide will focus on using the SSH client PuTTY to set up tunnels.

  1. To start, run PuTTY.

    Tunneling using PuTTY: PuTTY main screen

  2. Enter the hostname of the SSH server that you have an SSH account at. For example, “linux.gl.umbc.edu” because I have an SSH account there.

    Tunneling using PuTTY: Enter hostname

  3. Select the SSH protocol because tunneling only works over SSH protocols.

    Tunneling using PuTTY: Click SSH

  4. Go to the tunnel menu to actually set up the tunnel.

    Tunneling using PuTTY: Click tunnels

  5. Enter the port PuTTY will listen to on your computer. For example, port 6667 because that’s the default port that IRC clients connect to.

    Tunneling using PuTTY: Enter port

  6. Enter the hostname and port of where PuTTY will forward the connection to. For example, “studio64.yi.org:6667″ because that’s the IRC server I chat on most of the time.

    Tunneling using PuTTY: Enter destination

  7. Add the tunnel to the list of ports PuTTY will forward.

    Tunneling using PuTTY: Click add

  8. The tunnel should appear in the list of forwarded ports.

    Tunneling using PuTTY: See tunnel

  9. Go back to the session menu.

    Tunneling using PuTTY: Select session

  10. Click “Open” to connect.

    Tunneling using PuTTY: Click open
At this point, you’ll be required to log in to your SSH account. If you don’t get any error messages, then it worked! All you have to do is connect to localhost (127.0.0.1) on the source port, and the connection will be forwarded by PuTTY over the SSH connection and to the destination machine.