Use Your Home Computer To Get Past Internet Restrictions With SSH

At work or school, some ports are usually blocked and you cannot use a lot of applications such as BitTorrents, cannot access some websites, etc. Here's is how to get passed that using your home computer and SSH.

1. Install open ssh server on your home machine and leave it connected to internet.

In Ubuntu, open a terminal and:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server openssh-client

To start the server:

sudo /etc/init.d/ssh start

and to stop it:

sudo /etc/init.d/ssh stop

2. Check your external IP address for your home computer. You can, for example, go to http://whatismyip.com/ to see your external IP. If you use DHCP, you need to use something like DynDns which will use a hostname for your dynamic IP (see this how-to for complete instructions). Now, remember your home external IP, because you will use it at your home / school to connect to the OpenSSH server.


3. From work / school, enter this command:

ssh -D 2345 ipaddress _of_home_machine

You can replace 2345 with another port, it's just an example! Also, replace ipaddress _of_home_machine with... well, you got it, your home machine IP :)

Now open an application you wish to use to get pass the restrictions, let's say: Firefox. Open your Firefox browser and select Tools (or Edit for Linux) > Options (or Preferences for Linux) > Advanced tab > Network > Settings. Fill in 127.0.0.1 against the Socks host column and enter 2345 as port. That's it.

If you want to do this with Windows being either one of the computers, use OpenSSH for Windows which comes with both a server and a client.

[via unixlab]