1.5.3


Old Stuff

 www.your-freedom.net
 www.secure-tunnel.com

AlmostVPN and SOCKS

There are two possible ways to employ SOCKS mechanism with SSH:

  • you can tunnel SOCKS port (1080) over SSH tunnel to your private SOCKS proxy,
  • you can ask SSH client to create "dynamic proxy" and become your own SOCKS proxy.

This is a diagram of network configuration for the first scenario (tunnel SOCKS port)

http://www.leapingbytes.com/downloads/almostvpn/cookbook/images/socks-case1.png

To implement this configuration you have to login via SSH to server gater and configure local tunnel to server socks for port 1080. This is how to do it with AlmostVPN:

http://www.leapingbytes.com/downloads/almostvpn/cookbook/images/socks-case1-tunnel.png

Once you have your tunnel going, you can start to use SOCKS proxy on socks by configuring localhost as a SOCKS proxy:

http://www.leapingbytes.com/downloads/almostvpn/cookbook/images/proxies-socks-localhost.png

This is nice and simple solution, but it has one drawback. If you are using SOCKS proxy all the time ( in the office and on the road ), then, with this kind of configuration, you will need to keep changing settings for your SOCKS proxy ( from localhost on the road to socks in the office ). Better way to do it is to setup "Almost VPN" connection to your SOCKS proxy server like this:

http://www.leapingbytes.com/downloads/almostvpn/cookbook/images/socks-case1-almostvpn.png

With "Almost VPN" connection you can keep your SOCKS proxy configuration the same on the road and in the office:

http://www.leapingbytes.com/downloads/almostvpn/cookbook/images/proxies-socks-socks.png

This is a diagram of network configuration for the second scenario ("dynamic proxy")

http://www.leapingbytes.com/downloads/almostvpn/cookbook/images/socks-case2.png

To implement this configuration you have to login via SSH to server gater and configure dynamic proxy. This is how to do it with AlmostVPN:

http://www.leapingbytes.com/downloads/almostvpn/cookbook/images/socks-case2-localsocks.png

NOTE: Currently, AlmostVPN does not allow you to start profile unless you have at least one tunnel/drive/almost VPN connection configured. So, if all you really want is to have local SOCKS proxy going on, you will need to configure some dummy tunnel.

Using dynamic proxy requires declaring localhost as your SOCKS proxy server :

http://www.leapingbytes.com/downloads/almostvpn/cookbook/images/proxies-socks-localhost.png