incoming tunneling or tunneling via a 3rd party?
 

Hey,

First of all, take a look at the network topology: http://justinmitchell.net/network.gif (I know, I can't draw).

I have openssh running on workstation 1 (we'll call it W1). I need to connect from W3 to W1, but the school firewall filters all incoming connections from outside the firewall.

How can I connect via ssh from W3 to W1? The only thing I can think of is to setup a persistant tunnel to my Web server from W1, and then have W3 connect through that tunnel. Is this possible? How would it be accomplished, and what is this called, so that I can read up on it?

Just to let you know where I am... I'm currently connecting from W2 to W1 with VNC using an ssh tunnel... and we need to expand it outside of the school's network.

Any tips would be appreciated. If I wasn't clear, please review the diagram and let me know how I can explain it better.

Thanks!
Justin

Alright, played around a little bit, and came across something.

I can have W2 ssh into the Web server and use a remote tunnel. Then W1 would ssh into the Web server using a local tunnel to connect to the remote tunnel setup by W2. This would give W1 access to W2.

The problem is that connections are slow, even with SSH compression and tightvnc's best compression.

Also, a bigger problem is that W2 is a WinXP box, and I have to manually SSH into the Web server. Is there anything like autossh for windows that will run as a service and maintain a tunnel? I'd use cygwin, but it would conflict with the openssh package that I'm using.

Any comments on this method, or alternative methods would be appreciated. I'm open to using VPN, but I'm not sure if there would be any benefits.

Thanks again,
Justin