Remote port forwarding – This is a reverse of local port forwarding. A connection to this port enables data to be sent bidirectionally over the SSH connection between the client and remote PC.

Local port forwarding – A port from the client PC is forwarded to the remote PC. Another type of SSH port forwarding not covered in this guide, is Dynamic port forwarding (see Using SSH to secure Internet connections).ġ. Two types of SSH port forwarding are: (1) local port forwarding, and (2) remote port forwarding, with local port forwarding being the more common. Although both forwarded and local ports may be the same, the examples shown use different port numbers for clarification. All commands in the examples here are executed from the SSH client machine (192.168.1.1). In the following definitions and examples, a remote machine is defined as the PC with the SSH server. Another use for SSH tunneling not covered in this guide is to bypass firewalls that block certain ports, such as port 80, which are often blocked to prevent users from accessing the Internet using company computers (see related article – Using SSH to secure Internet connections). Setting up the SSH sessions can be accomplished for both PCs from the same SSH client PC. In other words, using VNC with SSH port forwarding makes a port from one PC appear on another PC through a SSH connection, providing a secure path for the VNC traffic.Ī practical use of SSH tunneling with local and remote port forwarding would be to securely exchange the desktops between two PCs using the VNC protocol. SSH tunneling creates a SSH tunnel to encapsulate unencrypted traffic (the payload protocol), such as VNC, over an encrypted SSH channel (the delivery protocol). Using SSH port forwarding to secure connections is also known as SSH Tunneling. SSH or Secure Shell, is a secure protocol with a feature called port forwarding that can be used to provide secure connections for VNC, as well as for POP3, SMTP, RDP, HTTP and other protocols.

Although VNC uses password encryption, the rest of the traffic is sent unencrypted. However, using VNC alone can be a security risk. VNC is a protocol that allows you to control a desktop from a remote computer and allows others to view or control your desktop from their computer. This guide illustrates the concepts for tunneling VNC over SSH.

How to enable vnc through ssh