PuTTY, Tunneling & You

PuTTY is possibly one of the most popular SSH clients today, and certainly one of the easiest to use. Here's how to configure a connection to Cepheid.ORG.

  1. Download the PuTTY Client from the author's homepage. All you need is putty.exe, and where you choose to save it is up to you. There's no install, no compressed files...just a single program: putty.exe. Run it, and it works.
  2. After you download PuTTY and run it the first time, the initial screen will look like this:
  3. Enter the Host Name: shell.cepheid.org and change your protocol to SSH. You can also choose to save these settings under their own heading, if you wish. Type a session name and click Save.
  4. On the left-hand menu, click on SSH below Connection. Make sure to set Preferred SSH protocol version to "2".
  5. If you need to using SSH Tunneling, click on Tunnels on the menu. Enter "8080" as the Source Port, select "Dynamic" and click Add.
  6. Be sure to go back to Session on the menu, and save you settings one last time. Highlight your session from the list and click Save.

Now you're ready to go. Whenever you open PuTTY, just load your saved session, and click Open. The truly adventurous might even make a shortcut to:

putty.exe -load "Cepheid"

This will open PuTTY with the session settings labled "Cepheid".

What about Tunneling!?

Oh, yeah. Well, tunneling allows you to funnel your internet through your connection to cepheid.org. Let's say you're using Firefox.

  1. Bring up the program's Options (likely Tools > Options).
  2. Make sure you're on the General tab, and look for Connection Settings. It's there, at the bottom. I have to actually resize the Options page to see it, every single time, but it is there.
  3. Click on Settings for your Connection Settings, and configure the screen thusly:
  4. Click OK, and continue browsing.

The upshot of this is that Firefox will now use your connection to cepheid.org for the internet. This also means if you do not have your connection to cepheid.org open in PuTTY, Firefox won't work! Firefox has extensions to allow for multiple proxy configurations, and fast switching, and similar 3rd-party products may exist for a certain browser out of Redmond. These proxy settings ought to work in nearly any internet program, however, just remember don't flood the connection, please.