I'm trying to get my head around using PuTTY to tunnel FTP between two computers (connected via a cross-over cable) at home. I can connect using PuTTY and interrogate the remote PC and I can use "ordinary" (insecure) ftp.exe to access the reomte FTP folder but I'm having trouble setting up the FTP to go through the tunnel.

Here are the settings in PuTTY:

In the Session, I have set the Host IP address to be the remote PC (169.254.17.175) and Port 22. The connection type is SSH.

In the SSH Tunnels, I have set the Source Port to be 9999 and the Destination to be 169.254.17.175:21 with Local, Remote and Dynamic (I have tried using just one of these but it didn't work either). I added each of these to the list of forwarded ports and saved the session.

I opened PuTTY and connected to the remote PC using a login User and Password on that PC (Win2000). I tried using ftp.exe on the local PC (XP Pro) by issuing the commands:

ftp
open 127.0.0.1 9999 (I also tried open localhost 9999)

It asked for a user and password and I gave one of several on the remote PC. It confirmed the connection and, when I checked the remote PCs FTP site's Current Sessions, it confirmed that the correct user was connected to the FTP site, apparantly from itself (169.254.17.175) and that, as far as I'm aware, is as it should be.

I issued the commands dir or ls from the ftp.exe and it stalled. I issued CTRL-C and it reported back:

500 Invalid PORT Command
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls

I wondered if the problem was the fact that I was using ftp.exe so I tried using IE7. I entered ftp://127.0.0.1:9999 in the address bar and it asked me for the username and password which I entered correctly. It attempted to retrieve the data but nothing was displayed in IE7 ("Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage"). When I checked the FTP site Current Sessions, it confirmed that I was connected.

It seems that I can connect to the FTP directory on the remote PC but data can't be retrieved and displayed on the local PC, using either the Command Screen or Web Browser. I've tried having c:\Inetpub\ftproot sharing on and off but the doesn't make any difference. I have also disabled ZoneAlarm and I don't have Windows Firewall enabled in any case.

I hope I've explained everything. Any ideas? I know that there are better ways to access FTP securely (WinSCP etc.) but I just want to be able to get this simple (pah!) setup working to make sure that I can, before I move on to more complicated tunnels, such as getting my e-mail.

Thanks for your time (and patience!).