Tunneling MS Remote Desktop Protocol

Remote Desktop Protocol is convenient to connect to a Microsoft Windows system remotely. But the protocol is not allowed to cross CSIM firewall.

The following example shows how to leverage puTTY and SSH tunnel to use Remopte Dektop Protocol outside CSIM.

The first step is to make sure that Remote Desktop Protocol can be used between your local and your remote machines; make the test while you are inside CSIM and there is not firewall issue. You must also test that TTY can be used to connect to bazooka.cs.ait.ac.th from outside CSIM.

Configuring puTTY tunnel for Remote Desktop Protocol

Remote Desktop Protocol needs only one tunnel on TCP port 3389.

1.	Start puTTY. Enable compression: Remote Desktop Protocol allows you to access your remote machine in graphic mode, a large amount of data will be sent through the SSH tunnel, between your PC and your remote machine; you better reduce the amount of data with ccompression. Compression is configurable under the option SSH.
2.	Create the tunnel on TCP port 3389. Go to the option SSH/Tunnels and add a new forwarded port from source port 3389 to destination olivier.cs.ait.ac.th:3389 The option local and auto should be selected by default. Of course, you replace olivier.cs.ait.ac.th with the name or IP address of your remote machine. Click on add.
3.	You should have the forwarded port showing like in the image: L3389    olivier.cs.ait.ac.th:3389
4.	Go to the session option at the very top and specify the destination where you connect to by entering bazooka.cs.ait.ac.th in the host name field. Give a name to the session and save it: you will be able to reuse it later on. You can then open the connection. Later you will be able to open the session you have saved and proceed on, starting from step 5 below.
5.	Enter your CSIM username and password. You are connected to bazooka.cs.ait.ac.th and the SSH tunnel is created: your local machine at 127.0.0.1 appears like a Remote Desktop Protocol machine, but all the traffic will be sent to bazooka through the tunnel and bazooka will send that traffic to your real Remote Desktiop Protocol machine olivier.cs.ait.ac.th.
6.	Launch Remote Desktop Client and connect to the server 127.0.0.1 or localhost. Use the username and password as you would use on your remote machine..

Et voilà!