I open an ssh tunnel all the time while I’m work. I found this nifty little app a while back for my Mac that manages all my ssh tunnels.
I could open up a term, and type ssh -N -p 22 -c 3des jhigley@XXX.dnsalias.com -L 6667:XXX.dnsalias.com:6667 each time I wanted to open up an ssh tunnel for IRC, but instead I open up STM and it auto connects each of my tunnels for me.
You can get it here.

MarcoPolo was a game we used to play in the pool. The idea, was one person was it, and would close their eyes and yell “Marco!” the other people in the pool would say “POLO” thus giving their location away. The person yelling marco would have to hunt down someone until they tagged someone. It’s a twist on the game of tag.
Recently I started consulting, I’m on the road a lot now. Mostly between 4 different locations: Home, Office1, Office2, Hotel. This application, call MarcoPolo allows me to define a few location, by probability, i.e. the wifi ssid I connect to is “Hotel” then I’m probably at the location Hotel, or if my ssid is guest and I hook my USB drive up, I could be at office1. After I define my locations and what happens at those locations comes the fun stuff, MarcoPolo kicks into gear, I can define rules, so I can say at office1,
- turn off iChat
- turn off sound
- open an SSH tunnel
Or when I get to the hotel, I wanna relax,
- start itunes, and play x song
- load mail.app
- load irc and iChat
I recommend getting this app, it’s worth the download, best of all it’s free!
See more about it here.
