This post is imported from my old blog
The other day at work, I thought I would see how steam run on my work computer. Well, my ports were all blocked by the network except the normal 80, 22, 21 etc. I then thought maybe I could simply tunnel my traffic through my SSH connection
Before we get anywhere, you NEED access to some kind of SSH. I have DD-WRT running on my home router which gives you the ability to login via SSH, I won’t get into that. You can google how to setup an SSH session. Also you will need admin access on the machine your trying to run steam on.
Download and install Cygwin. The default settings should be fine.
Download and install SocksCap. The main download link on the authors site does not work so try one of the links in that yahoo post.
You should already have steam installed, but I’m assuming it won't really run.
Fire up that cygwin console (should look like a dos window but with a $) and type the following:
ssh -ND 9999 username@your-ssh-server-ip
This will open an SSH connection to your SSH server. The -N disables remote command execution and the -D creates a SOCKS 5 proxy on the port you specify, in this case 9999. Note you type your username before the “@” sign and then your SSH servers IP. If all goes well, it may ask you to trust the host, and them prompt you for your password. If the password is accepted, there will be no further output. THIS IS GOOD!
Minimize the window, and open SocksCap. Fill in the settings based on the picture I included at the bottom of this article. This will link SocksCap with your SSH connection. Now click “File…New” and browse to your Steam.exe. The final step is to highlight Steam in the window in SocksCap and click “Run”. Thats it!
You can do this with almost any other program you choose. You won’t get blazing speeds unless the server has a very fast upload rate, but it does work, and what else can you ask for right?