About Secure Port Forwarding

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) offers strong protection against general data transmission failures caused by failed links, or network noise and congestion. It does not, however, provide protection against intentional attempts to sabotage these transmissions or intercept data. As a result, many protocols that run over TCP such as TELNET, NNTP, SMPT, IMAP, and POP are open to attacks.

With Connectivity Secure Shell, you can secure these otherwise unsecured TCP-based protocols by forwarding their connections through a Secure Shell session or tunnel. This process is generally referred to as port forwarding. In the following example, the TCP connection between POP client and server applications is forwarded through a Secure Shell tunnel.

To set up port forwarding, you create a tunnel profile with Connectivity Secure Shell and configure it for the type of forwarding you require. It may also be necessary to make some minor configuration changes at the TCP application level. After you launch the tunnel, the system works transparently, channelling the TCP/IP connection through a Secure Shell tunnel.