PuTTY semi-bug portfwd-loopback-choice

summary: Choice of loopback addresses for local port forwardings
class: semi-bug: This might or might not be a bug, depending on your precise definition of what a bug is.
difficulty: fun: Just needs tuits, and not many of them.
priority: low: We aren't sure whether to fix this or not.
fixed-in: 2002-12-19 (0.54) (0.55) (0.56) (0.57) (0.58) (0.59) (0.60) (0.61) (0.62)

Someone suggested that it might be useful to be able to specify which loopback address PuTTY should bind to when listening on local ports for local-to-remote port forwardings. Apparently, if you want to, you can listen separately on 127.0.0.1, 127.0.0.2, 127.0.0.3 and so on.

This would be useful because it would enable the use of the normal port numbers for forwarded services. Might be particularly handy when forwarding SMB.

The user interface for this would probably just involve specifying the IP address alongside the port number in the Tunnels panel: instead of asking to forward port 3456, you'd ask for 127.0.0.2:3456.

This was implemented as of 2002-12-19.

(Apparently this is also useful for forwarding Windows Terminal Services - see this posting.)

Update, 2004-Aug-10: we've had a report that Windows XP SP2 breaks this. (Apparently RC2 worked, but "RTM" - the release - doesn't.) There is a fix available from Microsoft - see the PuTTY FAQ.

Audit trail for this semi-bug.

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(last revision of this bug record was at 2005-03-11 18:36:53 +0000)