Windows SSH Tunnel Manager – Setup and Usage

sshvpnwindows

What application do you use on windows to create SSH tunnels

On Linux I use gSTM, and on OSX I have used STM, but I am not able to find any similar free tools on windows.

I don't want to use putty, or plink for these tunnels, because, I am looking for something that will sit in the tray starting stopping tunnels can easily be done by right-clicking. Ideally the configuration will be stored in a text file or something so I can automate the install of the app, keys, and tunnel configuration on a computer using a script.

Free is proffered, but please post information about any good windows SSH tunnel manager.

Best Answer

For what you're looking for, I believe you'll be happy with either the 'Putty-tunnel-manager' ('PTM'?) project or 'Putty Tray' solutions. The two get their sessions from Putty, though you can move/copy the sessions to PTM as oppose to putty tray which uses putty all the way. Only PTM will allow you to stop and start a tunnel session from the taskbar... Putty tray will allow you to start it only. I've used Tunnelier, but it doesn't seem to be what you're looking for since I couldn't find an easy way of creating taskbar items(sessions).

I like Putty Tray better because I like having access to a terminal window/session when I load a tunnel (makes me feel more powerful by having access to Putty's configuration as oppose to the limited settings offered in PTM)... but maybe you want this as a solution for end-users, so with PTM you only create your tunnel (no terminal window opens). The nice thing about this is that if you left-click on the icon it shows you your opened sessions. A minus for PTM, it gave me a UI programming error when trying to call the taskbar when the settings page was in the background... looks like a bug.

All in all, that's my assessment for the already posted solutions.

I'd like to add another solution I found though it might be a little more bloated than putty and the above solutions. In any case, I thought it was a worthy mention since it's free and pretty full-featured:

XShell

Free for home and education

alt text http://www.netsarang.com/e_image/xsh_161.gif

This features page is pretty informative, so I won't rewrite it here. I found this client to be pretty full-feature which was something I was looking for, specially for the Tabs and easy launching of sessions/tunnels through the taskbar. Here's a couple of highlighted features listed on the site:

Using full screen view to use your entire monitor as a terminal
Using Compose bar to send a string to multiple servers at once.
Using tunneling bar for real time channel monitoring (SSH)
Using Dynamic Port Forwarding with Tunneling bar (SSH)
Using local shell interface to control Xshell

The application sessions are text-based and saved to the user's profile which could be easily scripted '\Application Data\NetSarang\Xshell\Sessions\Links'

The application comes with Xactivator.exe (276KB) which is the taskbar app that can be launched at startup, finds the sessions and allows you quick launch for them... unfortunately, it does not provide a disconnect in the taskbar.

Compatible with:

Microsoft Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista

Microsoft Windows Terminal Server

Citrix MetaFrame for Windows

Related Solutions

Windows – Using an SSH tunnel to browse the web

There are two parts to getting this to work, so I'll address them seperately.

Connecting to your Server:

As you've mentioned that all you can talk to is a proxy on 443 and 80, you'll need to tunnel your SSH connection out through the proxy. You do that by telling Putty to use the proxy server to connect. Under the 'proxy' menu. Select HTTP and then enter the details for the corporate proxy.

From your post, it seems like you've got the connection working fine.

Configure Putty to Create a SOCKS proxy on the local machine

Both putty and OpenSSH support opening a SOCKS proxy. For OpenSSH you'd use:

ssh -D <port>

And then point your browser at that port. In putty you create a 'dynamic' port forward. You'll find it under the Tunnels menu. Enter your desired listening port and then enter anything you like as a destination (it gets ignored for dynamic forwards). You can then point your browsers proxy settings at that localhost:<port> and it should work.

For more information, the relevant part of the putty documentation is at http://tartarus.org/~simon/putty-snapshots/htmldoc/Chapter3.html#using-port-forwarding.

As others have posted you may not want to circumvent the corporate filtering though as it's not something you may want to explain :).

SSH Tunnel using PuTTY no longer works after server change

At rwired's request, I'm reposting my previous comment as an answer, which was:

Can the remote Linux server establish outbound connections to TCP port 80? For instance, if you "telnet www.google.com 80" from the server, do you get "Connection established"? Or does it just hang?

The intended implication was that something is blocking the outbound connection, which rwired discovered was indeed the case.