Sometimes, you want to access a service running on a remote server, but there might be a firewall that does not forward the traffic to the port.

One way to deal with this is to create a socks proxy.

If we direct traffic from our computer, to use the proxy, we will be able to access the remote services .

1. Create an ssh tunel/socks proxy

ssh -fCND 127.0.0.1:8157 ubuntu@amazonec2host

2. Tell your browser to use the proxy I use Google chrome and like the extension Proxy Switch Omega

The extension, makes it easy to enable and disable chrome from using the proxy.

We can then direct So, all traffic will go to the proxy we created

1. Create a Proxy profile, with the below options

{% asset_img new_proxy.png [EC2 proxy profile] %}

2. Create a Switch Profile, with the below options {% asset_img switch_profile.png [Switch profile] %}

The above settings, tells chrome that every url that matches those patterns to use our proxy.

*ec2*.amazonaws.com*
*ec2*.amazonaws.com*
*localhost*

Note: The last patterns makes services running locally on your machine inaccesible on localhost:port from the browser while the profile is active. Those services are still accessible on 127.0.0.1:port

3. Tell chrome to use the profile {% asset_img choosing_profile.png [Choosing profile] %}

Now, in your browser you can access services running on your remote host on urls like

localhost:8080 amazon_public_ip:8080

If the above too much, and you just want to forward a single port, one can use

ssh -L 9000:localhost:5432 user@example.com

The above will forward local traffic from port 9000 to the remote server port 5432.