PuTTY -- A Freeware Telnet/SSH Client
Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 at 10:10 PM by Randall
Many Web Hosts (like Dreamhost) provide access to a unix shell account. Long ago, before the days when script kiddies made high security a must, most web hosts offering a shell access who let you telnet into the shel account. Telnet is not a very secure protocol, so now most hosts offering this useful feature require their custumers to use Secure SHell (SSH) to access their unix shell account. Unfortunately for Windows users, most of the SSH programs in the Windows world are commercial and somewhat expensive. PuTTY is the exception. PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and it includes the ability to look like an xterm to a unix system. While it is not as polished looking as the commercial offerings, it does its actual job quite well -- and has a number of useful features. It will even do port forwarding.
This isn't a program that everyone needs. Not even every webmaster needs it -- it's possible to do most things a website needs without ever seeing a unix shell (aka the dreaded but powerful unix command line). after all. If you need it, however, PuTTY can get the job done without putting a dent in your wallet.
Rating: 4 Stars
Operating System: Windows 9x or higher
(also Linux)
License: Open Source (MIT License)
Price:
Free
Version Reviewed: 0.58
Web Site: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/