1. What is SSH?
SSH, the Secure Shell, is a standard protocol that encrypts communications between your computer and a server. The computer being connected to must be running an ssh daemon, or server, process. The computer which is attempting to connect must be running an SSH client. The encryption prevents these communications from being viewed or modified by network operators.

2. What Can You Do With SSH?
SSH can be used for a wide variety of secure communications applications, where secure log-in to a server and secure file transfers (SCP or SFTP) are the most common. SSH is especially useful for censorship circumvention because it can provide encrypted tunnels and work as a generic proxy client. Censors may be reluctant to block SSH entirely because it is used for many purposes other than circumventing censorship; for example, it is used by system administrators to administer their servers over the Internet.


3. Requirement Before Using SSH
Using SSH requires an account on a server machine, generally a Unix or Linux server. For censorship circumvention, this server needs to have unrestricted Internet access and, ideally, is operated by a trusted contact. Some companies also sell accounts on their servers, and many Web hosting plans provide SSH access. You can find a list of shell account providers at http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Access_Providers/Unix_Shell_Providers/ which sell accounts for about 2-10 US Dollars a month.

4. What is SSH Tunnel?
SSH also has a wonderful feature called SSH Port Forwarding, sometimes called SSH Tunnel, which allows you to establish a secure SSH session and then tunnel arbitrary TCP connections through it. Tunnels can be created at any time, with almost no effort and no programming, which makes them very appealing. At Aplusproxy we'll look at SSH Port Forwarding in detail, as it is a very useful but often misunderstood technology. SSH Port Forwarding can be used for secure communications in a myriad of different ways.

5. Free Software for SSH Tunnel
(1) PuTTY is the most famous SSH client. It is available from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html. You can save the putty.exe program on your hard drive for future use.
(2) Portable Firefox is a fully functional package of Firefox optimized for use on a USB key drive. It has some specially-selected optimizations to make it perform faster and extend the life of your USB key as well as a specialized launcher that will allow most of your favorite extensions to work as you switch computers. Portable Firefox is available from http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable.
(3) For those who are interested in setting up a SSH Server, we recommend OpenSSH as the server software. The website for OpenSSH is http://www.openssh.com . But OpenSSH doesn't run on Windows unfortunately... But there is a site that converted OpenSSH to run on Windows, which is what we want at http://sshwindows.sourceforge.net/ .

6. How to Create SSH Tunnel in Windows
Click Here for the step-by-step guide.

7. Shell account Providers:

1. St0rage.org - Donate $5 and you will get a shell account.
2. Bshellz.net - Provide free shell account, but only users who donate over £10 will be allowed to create SSH tunnels.
3. Cotse.net - Paid SSH Tunnel provider. The cost is $5.95 per month. They have more services for your account.