Windows – SSH Tunneling on Windows

puttysshssh-tunnelwindows

I'd like to perform SSH tunneling on Windows. This is extremely trivial on Linux. 

ssh -L 7456:someurl.com:7456 A.B.C.D:8080

This would cause SSH client to listen on 127.0.0.1:7456, and then connections on that port would be tunneled to the remote SSH server (A.B.C.D:8080) and then proxied to someurl.com:7456.

For some reason, I cannot find a similar way to accomplish this. Most people suggested putty, but the GUI makes no sense.

Putty GUI Screenshot

What on earth do I put on the fields to accomplish the same result?

Best Answer

You don't need to use the GUI to initiate a PuTTY connection. I actually prefer to just launch it from the Windows Run dialog or a powershell/cmd prompt most of the time.

The Help button in the screenshot you posted will open the PuTTY User Manual. In it, there's a whole section called The PuTTY command line within the section called Using PuTTY. Specifically, section 3.8.3.5 is all about port forwarding. From the manual:

As well as setting up port forwardings in the PuTTY configuration (see section 4.25), you can also set up forwardings on the command line. The command-line options work just like the ones in Unix ssh programs.

To forward a local port (say 5110) to a remote destination (say popserver.example.com port 110), you can write something like one of these:

putty -L 5110:popserver.example.com:110 -load mysession

plink mysession -L 5110:popserver.example.com:110

To forward a remote port to a local destination, just use the -R option instead of -L:

putty -R 5023:mytelnetserver.myhouse.org:23 -load mysession

plink mysession -R 5023:mytelnetserver.myhouse.org:23

Based on your example, the command line would be something like this.

putty -L 7456:someurl.com:7456 -ssh A.B.C.D:8080

Also if you actually want to know how to use the GUI for setting up a tunnel, that's in section 4.25 called The Tunnels panel.

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