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Let us go back to scenario we used when we discussed advantages of using SSH Tunnels

As you remember, to make our e-mail client work we were forced to change its configuration and make it talk to port 110 on localhost (instead of crawlingvarmint as we used to when we were connecting to e-mail from inside Office Network). Not a big deal, but it gets annoying after a while. Will it be much nicer to be able to use the same configuration regardless of from where you are "dialing-in"? One obvious solution will be to run SSH Tunnels all the time (in and out of Office Network) and keep your e-mail client configured to talk to localhost all the time. Luckily, AlmostVPN allows you to achive the same goal without having to run SSH tunnels all the time.
So what exactly "AlmostVPN connection" does and how it is different from good old tunnels?

As you can see, we still have port 110 on local end of the tunnel, and all packets get tunneled to port 110 on slidingpinguin. The only difference is that latte now has split personality. It still knows that it is latte, but, at the same time, it thinks that it is slidingpinguin. So, when your e-mail client trying to talk to slidingpinguin, it ends up talking to local end of the tunnel on latte. Bingo!!! From e-mail client point of view now it looks the same when you connecting from inside or from outside of your Office Network.

NOTE: There are no free lunches in this world, so as everything else AlmostVPN connections have some drawbacks. As you might remember, in case of tunnels you do not have to match port numbers on local and remote ends of the tunnel. So if you want to connect to 2 different POP3 servers you can assign port 60110 for tunnel leading to first server and 61110 for tunnel leading to second server. With AlmostVPN Connection the whole idea is that you want to keep port number on local end the same as port number on remote end. So what now? Does it mean that you can connect to single POP3 server at a time? Bad news is that it is true for Recreational version of the AlmostVPN. Good news is that Proffesional version does not have this limitation.

Anatomy of AlmostVPN Connection Manager

To configure AlmostVPN Connection (Connection) you need to use AlmostVPN Connection Manager view

To add new connection you need to push

button. Once you add new connection, you will have a chance to enter additional information. Remember when we talked about Accounts it was mentioned that all other things need to be associated with one? Almost VPN connection is one of that other things. If you have only one account, then it will be selected automatically. Otherwise you might want to use

to select appropriate one. Enter host name for the server you are trying to connect into Host Name field and service name/number in Service field.

NOTE: Some of more popular service names are available from Service combo by default. If you want, you can add some of your own via Known Service Manager acccesible via

Step by Step

Let us imagine following setup

This is step by step instructions you need to follow to define appropriate AlmostVPN connection

AlmostVPN User Manual

What is AlmostVPN connection and how to use it.

Anatomy of AlmostVPN Connection Manager

Step by Step