Socks2http client, v. 1.02.263 is released

Socks2http client, v. 1.02.263 is released, it improves stability for large number of connectons. You can try it here

Gateway Free Ride Available Now

We now provide free-ride tunneling for those who:

• want to try the tunnel before subscribing to the service, or

• can not afford to pay for the service

You can try it here.

FAQ is replaced to Wiki to let users contribute

In order to let users contribute their tips in managing and configuring tunneling with different client applications through socks2http we introduced a simple wiki. Direct link is here.

Socks2Http, v. 1.0.2.173 is out

It includes:

• Improved stability
• Crash diagnostics files
  

Socks2http, v.1.0.2.143 is released

It adds much higher precision in autodiscovery of an http proxy.

More on how we use tunneling

Here is one more example of how we use our own tunneling. We needed to import messages from mbx format(Eudora) into gmail. We knew that there is a utility, GML(Google Mail Loader), to scan mailboxes and send individual email through an SMTP server to gmail: http://www.marklyon.org/gmail/
The problem was that typically ISPs block access to other SMTP servers and limit or throttle access to their own SMTP server. So, here is the way we used it:
In socks2http through PortMapper we created the following mapping:
Local port 25 ==> localhost, port 25
This means that local port 25 is forwarded to 'localhost'. However 'localhost' is resolved on the gateway which means that SMTP server on the gateway will be used for forwarding email. Our SMTP server is configured to accept email only from the same box, which works out well as the gateway running on the same box with SMTP server will be its SMTP client. In this case GML utility should be configured to use 'localhost' as SMTP server(in GML localhost resolves to the machine where socks2http is running).
Everything worked as planned, except we ran into a small snag. Instead of GML utility
we used our own SMTP sender(to avoid built-in 2 second delay) which flooded gmail server with emails and caused it to throttle our emails. In order to overcome it we had to put a 1 second delay between sending emails. This method allowed us to import over 10000 emails in about 3 hours.

For objectivity sake we need to mention that there is another way to import mail into gmail using imap/pop3 server and gmail's fetch from pop3 function: http://www.zoliblog.com/blog/_archives/2007/3/28/2840555.html
However it seems that realistically you need a commercial imap account to accomplish it.

How to run Totalrc tunneling on Mac

Full-fledged Apple support is not there yet. However, in order to run tunneling on Mac our solution for now is tunneling applet, the same applet that enables tunneling on Linux. We tested in in both: Safari and Firefox.
The url for the applet is:

http://trc1.mine.nu/tunnel/index.html

A little tip here: if you need to tunnel your browser traffic you can run the applet in Safari and configure Firefox to use socks proxy at localhost:1080. This way all Firefox traffic will be tunneled through the tunneling applet running on Safari.

Socks2http 1.02.96 is released

New version of the tunneling client, socks2http, is released. It takes care of crashes happening when using POSTPOLL and POSTRECV tunneling methods as well as changes some configuration parameters to bypass blocking. New version number is 1.02.96
It can be downloaded from:
http://www.totalrc.net/s2h/setups2h.exe
http://www.primetunnel/setups2h.exe

If this is your first time running socks2http we will provide you with a free trial gateway id for 1 day.

More information about our tunneling system is at http://www.totalrc.net/s2h

Remote control behind firewalls is now free

As the title says: Remote control behind firewalls is now totally free: http://www.totalrc.net/totalrc

If you plan to use it for non-commercial purposes and do not need encryption on the agent side you can download the agent for free and use the remote control gateway also for free.

A little reminder how it works: you need to install remote control agent on the computer that you want to control. There is no need to configure a firewall, agent is able to communicate to the gateway as long as there is internet access. Then you point your browser to http://www.totalrc.net/totalrc and enter your host id. IP address is not required. Host id can be obtained from our site absolutely free.

Remote control can work in 2 modes: screen shots and java applet.
Java applet used to work only with Microsoft Java VM, now it is fixed to work with Sun Java VM as well.
If you need help please email us at help@totalrc.net

FREE Gateway Access Trial

Free gateway trial is on!
If you never used tunneling gateway before please sign up with your email address and receive a user id for the gateway that will be valid for one day.
Click here to try.
More information about our tunneling program is at http://www.totalrc.net/s2h
Typical use for our tunneling system, including a pc client, socks2http, and tunneling gateways on the internet, is running an instant messenger, peer-to-peer software, computer games, etc. where some restrictions on internet access are imposed.

Running tunneling applet on Linux

Many users requested client tunneling functionality on computing platforms other than Windows. So far, our solution was kind of wimpy: run tunneling client on a pc and connect to it from Linux or Mac. Now, that our tunneling client can run as an applet it is java's multiplatform capability that solves the multiplatform issue for client tunneling.
We completed testing of the new tunneling applet on Linux. It ran in Mozilla Firefox with Sun Java plugin, no glitches during successful tunnelling for several hours.

Some useful links:

Configuration instructions for Firefox Java plugin

Tunneling applet urls:
Applet1
Applet2

Browser-based tunneling applet

The weak spot of our main tunneling client - socks2http is
configuration. It requires you to enter proxy server,
proxy credentials, gateway configuration, etc.
In order to avoid configuration and installation as well
we have developed browser-based tunneling applet that only
requires you to enter user id. This makes tunneling literally
one click away. Here are 2 url for tunneling applets. We suggest to use first url,
if it is blocked then use second:
Applet1
Applet2

Free http tunneling software and practically free gateway trial

Based on the feedback from many users we have found that 15-day demo version of our tunneling software, socks2http, is an annoyance and $5 gateway trial often exceeds the threshold of potential user curiosity. Helping new users to make a decision we are now offering the client software free, for non-commercial use, and providing a $0.99 gateway access trial for 2 days of 25K/s tunneling. As much as we would like to offer a free gateway trial at this point it is still a logistical impossibility, as, per our previous experience, thousands of users slow our gateways down to a crawl, making tunneling experience a pain. Here are some helpful links:

Totalrc.net home page
Socks2http home page
Purchase online
Purchase online mirror

Extending URL Entry Helper to Firefox

www-what is a new Firefox 1.5 extension. As you are typing a url in the url window it instantly looks it up in our database( over 5 million entries) and shows possible matches, in a pop-up window. You can click on any match or continue typing for better match: http://www.totalrc.net/wwwwhat.xpi

URL Entry Helper

Typing the url into the "Address" field of a browser is arguably one of the slowest experiences in web browsing. Besides being slow it may be painful too: sometimes it is hard to remember whether the site's name is ".net" or ".com", whether it is "system" or "systems", etc. We decided to take care of this problem in our virtual browser (more details here...). Using Ajax and back-end database storing about 5 million popular web urls we display a dropdown box with first 10 matches of what you type in the url window as you keep typing. Give it a try and enjoy the convenience: http://www.totalrc.net/browser.html .

Browsing the web through TotalRC

Sometimes full-fledged tunneling can be an overkill. Typical example: You need to check your yahoo email from work but your employer blocks mail.yahoo.com. In this case by using Totalrc tunneling you can "socksify" or "proxyfy" the browser and read your yahoo mail. As an experiment we decided to offer another solution. You point your browser to http://www.totalrc.net/browser.html and type your url in the url box. We will retrieve your html content and send it to you. Give it a try, it works with many sites. Some useful sites, like www.hotmail.com don't work with it yet, probably because they use a lot of javascript. We will post a note as soon as we make some progress.

How we use our own software

Totalrc.net is a small company. We develop and sell tunneling software as well as provide tunneling service. We also provide software consulting services. In the latter role we often face various restrictions by corporate firewalls designed to protect employees from accessing internet protocols, other than http and from accessing certain web sites. I want to share some tips and tricks on how we use our tunneling service. They may be helpful to our users as well.

1. Some sites are blocked, typically useful sites such as yahoo mail or hotmail.
We use the following setup: use Internet Explorer without any modifications to access intranet and allowed sites. To access blocked sites we use Mozilla FireFox browser, configured to use Socks proxy, port 1080, all other proxy entries are left blank. This way traffic to blocked sites is tunneled through our gateway and typically goes through, intranet sites, frequently optimized for IE, are accessed without any problems, and, there is no reconfiguration involved. FireFox works very well with Socks proxy.
2. Remote control software clients, particularly VNC is blocked.
To access remote computer running VNC agent(TightVNC, UltraVNC, etc.) we use Port Mapper in socks2http: 5900->[computer ip address]:5900 TCP
Then all you need to do is to point your VNC client to 127.0.0.1
3. Instant Messengers are blocked.
We typically use Trillian IM client specifying socks proxy 127.0.0.1, port 1080 for all IM plugins: MSN, Yahoo, AIM