I am using an excellent open-source tunneling solution called PageKite for about an year now. It’s a small utility written in Python with almost zero dependencies (okay there is one) and it enables you to reach various ports behind NAT. More on the PageKite.net which also provides subscription-based service for those who do not want to run their own man-in-the-middle server (which is needed for this to operate). By the way they datacenters are spread over whole world with excellent Europe coverage.
After decent testing time, I pushed PageKite into EPEL 5 and 6 (it is already included in Fedora repos). Installation and setup is ultra easy:
# yum -y install pagekite
In the PageKite.net service, create your account and create new “kite”. That is basically a subdomain which will be used for your machine. Now edit this file:
# vim /etc/pagekite.d/10_account.rc
Set your ‘kitename’ (which you created recently) and ‘kitesecret’ token and delete ‘abort_not_configured’ line. We want to enable SSH tunneling:
# mv /etc/pagekite.d/80_sshd.rc.sample /etc/pagekite.d/80_sshd.rc
If you want to tunnel HTTP, do this:
# mv /etc/pagekite.d/80_httpd.rc.sample /etc/pagekite.d/80_httpd.rc
You can tunnel any other protocol, read PageKite documentation for more. Start the thing:
# service pagekite start
Logs are here:
# tail /var/log/pagekite/pagekite.log -f
It’s the time to connect via your new tunnel. It is not that straightforward as you may expect, but you need to tune your ssh client configuration a bit:
# vim ~/.ssh/config
...
Host *.pagekite.me
CheckHostIP no
ProxyCommand /usr/bin/corkscrew %h 443 %h %p
...
I am using corkscrew tool which is a TCP tunneling solution via HTTP, which works great with PageKite. There are other options, but this one is the easiest and the most reliable. You will need to install the corkscrew tool (I am on Fedora):
# yum -y install corkscrew
Work done!
# ssh yourkite-yourname.pagekite.me
Nice, isn’t it? Now, if you find out how to tunnel mosh protocol, let me know bellow.