What is Local Port Forwarding?

Local port forwarding is the most common type of port forwarding. It is used to forward data securely from another client application running on the same computer as the ssh client. Local port forwarding lets a user connect from the local computer to another server.

Connections from the ssh client are forwarded via the ssh server, then to a destination server. As stated above, local port forwarding forwards data from another client application running on the same computer as the ssh client. The ssh client is configured to redirect data from a specified local port through the secure tunnel to a specified destination host and port.