Well, for that purpose, I always use Cygwin's sshd (www.cygwin.com) as ssh server and Putty (www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty) as ssh client.

The traffic is strongly encrypted, it asks you username and password (if you configure it to) or uses your own's private key, no limit in the number of connection hops (A -> B, B -> C, C -> D, etc), no programming required, and it's still free.

But it's just me.

Peace always,
<jdenny>