If persistent access to a wide range of services is required, (for example, working exclusively on a corporate network while telecommuting), then a VPN is probably a better choice. If you are trying to decide between SSH and a VPN, I find that SSH is generally appropriate in situations where occasional remote access is needed to specific services, (for example, checking email, downloading files). In fact, a VPN is roughly equivalent to an SSH session where everything is being forwarded over a single secure channel. In effect, it is usually possible to create a pretty good approximation to a VPN, (Virtual Private Network), just by forwarding a handful of common ports, and using scp, (or WinSCP), to transfer files. For example, we could also forward port 80, (HTTP), to provide secure access to a corporate webserver.
#TERA TERM VS PUTTY WINDOWS#
If you are mainly interested in securing your Windows email client, you could try jumping straight to my step-by-step guide to configuring a PuTTY SSH client for port forwarding email traffic.Īny number of ports can be forwarded in a single SSH session. If we also forward port 25, (which normally handles SMTP, the outgoing email protocol), then both incoming and outgoing email will be encrypted. our incoming email), will be transferred over the encrypted SSH link. Now, if we configure our email client to connect to port 110 on our local machine it will in fact be connecting to the remote mailserver, but all the data, (i.e. If we can SSH to the mailserver before downloading our mail, we can configure the SSH session to “forward” port 110 through the encrypted SSH link. This can be used to provide secure access to other services that do not normally encrypt data during transmission.įor example, to receive email, many email programs use the (unencrypted) POP3 protocol to connect to a mailserver on port 110. In addition to the direct access provided by the “ssh” and “scp” commands, the SSH protocol includes a feature called “Port Forwarding”, or “Tunneling”. What is “Port Forwarding” or “Tunneling”?
#TERA TERM VS PUTTY FREE#
Please note that I will only include references to products that are available free of charge, and I have a strong preference for open source implementations.įor more links to SSH tools for Windows, (and Mac), I’d recommend trying the OpenSSH Windows/Mac pages:, or. VPN technologies, (including IPSEC), are discussed in passing, but these are not the main focus.Įmail me,, if you find better implementations, or if you think there’s anything I can add here. It describes free SSH implementations for Windows.Īlthough this document concentrates on Windows-specific implementations, much of the content, particularly relating to Port Forwarding and Authorized Keys, applies to any SSH implementation, regardless of the platform. If you want to access remote servers securely from Windows 9x, NT, ME, 2000 or XP and don’t want to pay for programs that are freely available for UNIX-like platforms, you may find this document useful.
#TERA TERM VS PUTTY HOW TO#