SSH and you #2 - doing it right.

ok, so if you followed my previous tutorial with freeSSHd, you might have noticed some pesky errors....
when i wrote that, i was testing everything on a LAN network, and it all seemed to go well.... but i recently started using it at college and i was baffled to see an error every 2 minutes or so.

in this tutorial, we will talk about how to set up winSSHd.... as the name implies, it is win (well, its for windows).  some of this tutorial will be the same as the last, however the majority of it involving hosting has changed.



to set this up, we are going to need two programs and a good (not internet explorer) internet browser.

• WinSSHD - the host we will run at home. download
• PuTTY - the client we will use to connect your home computer. download
• firefox (or any other web browser, but this tutorial will use firefox) download

configuring WinSSHd:
when you open up the installer, choose to install a new winsshd site, and accept the license agreement. click next, and choose to use the personal version, NOT the trial.
click next until its done installing and the server control panel is open.

when it is, click on open easy settings (if it doesn't open automatically).

go to the virtual accounts tab.
make your account here -- your virtual account name is your login name, password would be the password... make sure you check login allowed, otherwise your account will be disabled. file transfer is for sftp, terminal is your ssh terminal, and port forwarding is for tunneling connections.

Port Forwarding:
next comes port forwarding.... every router is different, but some steps are the same. first you need your default gateway ip, just open cmd (click start, and type cmd in the start menu) and type 'ipconfig' and look for it.

type that in your internet browser. it might ask for a username and password. if that is the case, just look up what the defult user / pass are. now look for a port forwarding section (look around or google where it is). when you find it... add a new forwarded port... use port 22, tcp + udp, name it whatever you want, and set the ip your forwarding to to be your pc's ip (which will also show up when you typed in ipconfig, chances are its 192.168.1.***)

Configuring PuTTY:
after you have your ports set up, we just have to configure firefox and putty. putty is the program that you will need to run at your workplace or school.... NOT on your home computer. (however, run it and familiarize your self with it).
open putty up, and on the left side look for ssh. click on it. now enable compression. this just speeds up the data being sent between the computers.

now expand the SSH section on the left by clicking the +. then click on tunneling.
under source port, put any port that is higher than 2000... i used 6789. now in the destination box, type 127.0.0.1:6789 (or whatever port you used). make sure you check the dynamic box, then press add.
it should look like this. this tells putty to look for traffic on the localhost at port 6789... which is where firefox will be directing its internet traffic to.

now click on Session up on the top left. in the 'Host Name (or ip address)" box, put the IP to your home computer. to get this ip, go to whatismyip.com and it will tell you. for port, put down 22 and make sure SSH is clicked.you should be able to connect, and it will ask you for your username and password.

Configuring Firefox.
open up firefox and go to Tools -> options.
click on the advanced tab up top.
click on network, then settings.

click on manually configure proxy, under the SOCKS settings, put in 127.0.0.1 and then put in whatever port you used in putty, in this case, 6789. this tells firefox to send all its http traffic (port 80) through port 6789 on the local host.... which is exactly where putty is looking for traffic.

press ok, firefox will now connect through your SSH tunnel.
make sure when your done you switch back to system proxy, otherwise pages will not load when putty is not up.