Meerkat

An easy-to-use SSH tunnel manager built specifically for the Mac.

A perfect marriage of UNIX power with Mac elegance, Meerkat includes innovative features such as application triggers, automatic reconnection on system sleep & network change, Growl integration, Bonjour support, command-line and AppleScript integration, and much more.

Not familiar with tunnels? SSH tunnels (sometimes called port forwarding) are a way to use an SSH account on a server to forward other types of net traffic -- for example, HTTP web traffic, iTunes music sharing traffic, or SMTP email sending traffic -- through the SSH account. Then, this traffic appears to come from the SSH host instead of the original computer.

Screenshots

Feature Highlights

	Application Triggers Tunnels can be associated with trigger applications. The result? Tunnels come up when their trigger apps do, so dependent apps have everything they need at the ready. Desktop 3.9M iPhone 4.4M/609K
	Automatic Reconnect Meerkat will automatically detect system sleep, wake, and network events and reactivate your tunnels for you. Your tunnels will be right where you left them, ready for use. Desktop 3.5M iPhone 4.3M/612K
	Tunnel Setup Assistant Local, remote, dynamic -- not quite sure which type of tunnel you need? Meerkat's Tunnel Setup Assistant can walk you through entering the details to get the job done. Desktop 4.2M iPhone 4.4M/630K
	Bonjour Support Tunnels can advertise their presence on the local LAN with Bonjour. Web browsers, iTunes, VNC clients, and FTP clients all speak Bonjour and can auto-detect tunneled services. Desktop 4.0M iPhone 4.7M/680K
	Command-Line Tools Moving to Meerkat doesn't mean giving up your command-line tools. Meerkat has a shell utility that can activate and deactivate tunnels and supports AppleScript `osascript` calls, too. Desktop 5.9M iPhone 4.1M/542K
	Session Launching Meerkat can be used to quickly launch SSH sessions to all of your accounts. It even includes support for system-wide keystrokes mapped to these accounts. Desktop 4.8M iPhone 3.6M/497K
	AppleScript Support Meerkat is fully scriptable. You can query the accounts and tunnels that have been setup, as well as activate and deactivate tunnels from AppleScript. Desktop 5.2M iPhone 3.7M/567K

Other Features

	A key player Meerkat can either store SSH passwords in the system keychain or use the public key authentication built in to SSH to manage your tunneled accounts. Either way, you hold the key, securely.
	Growl, but don't bite Meerkat notifies you of tunnel activations and deactivations via Growl, so whether by application trigger, Meerkat startup, or manually, you always know what's going on with your services.
	Play with the big cats Meerkat is fully compatible with 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard. Mwrrrow!
	What's on the menu Meerkat's status bar and dock menus give you full access to your tunnels. What's more, Meerkat can be run without a dock item for a very low paw, err, footprint.
	Right from the start You can set tunnels to automatically start when Meerkat does for hassle-free port forwarding whenever you need it.