3.8.3.5 -L, -R and -D: set up port forwardings

As well as setting up port forwardings in the PuTTY configuration (see section 4.26), you can also set up forwardings on the command line. The command-line options work just like the ones in Unix ssh programs.

To forward a local port (say 5110) to a remote destination (say popserver.example.com port 110), you can write something like one of these:

putty -L 5110:popserver.example.com:110 -load mysession
plink mysession -L 5110:popserver.example.com:110

To forward a remote port to a local destination, just use the -R option instead of -L:

putty -R 5023:mytelnetserver.myhouse.org:23 -load mysession
plink mysession -R 5023:mytelnetserver.myhouse.org:23

To specify an IP address for the listening end of the tunnel, prepend it to the argument:

plink -L 127.0.0.5:23:localhost:23 myhost

To set up SOCKS-based dynamic port forwarding on a local port, use the -D option. For this one you only have to pass the port number:

putty -D 4096 -load mysession

For general information on port forwarding, see section 3.5.

These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and PSFTP.