I love SSH tunnels. I use them as a cheap VPN solution when traveling, and if I need to get access to an internal web server on the inside of a network (assuming the network isn’t separated). As an example, I have 2 computers at home which I use daily for development, etc. When traveling, I have a laptop that I use. Well, I use VirtualBox at home, since the computers there have plenty of RAM to support it, where my laptop isn’t as VM friendly (its old, but has served me well, and will continue to do so until it croaks.), so I needed a way to access my applications running on the VM while on the go. Enter SSH tunnels. SSH tunnels work by opening a port over which traffic can flow to the remote location. Using ‘dynamic ports’, you get a SOCKS proxy.
You create SSH tunnels using:
ssh -D 8080 username@remote_server
Which opens port 8080 on the local machine. Then, you can configure your browser of choice to use a SOCKS v5 Proxy at 127.0.0.1:8080. Specifically in Firefox, make sure that none of your other proxy settings are set.
It should look like the following:
Now, you can check the IP address for your connection by visiting a site like: http://www.whatsmyip.org/
