ZTunnel

A Blazor Web App (.NET 10) that creates and manages SSH TCP port-forwarding tunnels using SSH.NET (Renci.SshNet) running as a background hosted service.

Features

• Username / password SSH authentication.
• Multiple TCP port forwards (Local -L and Remote -R) with per-entry enable/disable.
• Persistent config in %LOCALAPPDATA%\ZTunnel\config.json.
• Background IHostedService that keeps the SSH connection alive and auto-reconnects if it drops.
• Add / edit / remove forwards live without disconnecting, or force a full reconnect at any time.
• Responsive dark UI (sidebar + top bar + cards), modal editor, live status chips.
• Built-in "Server Setup Guide" page.

Pages

Path	What it does
/	Dashboard — connection status, active tunnels.
/credentials	Configure SSH host, port, user, password.
/tunnels	Add / edit / remove / enable port forwards.
/setup	Tutorial for configuring sshd for TCP tunneling.

Run

cd ZTunnel
dotnet restore
dotnet run

Then open https://localhost:7080 (or http://localhost:5080).

1. Go to SSH Credentials, fill in host/port/user/password, click Save & Reconnect.
2. Go to Port Forwards, click + Add forward, configure bound + destination host/port, save.
3. Toggle forwards on/off, or click Reconnect SSH to rebuild the session.

How it works

• SshTunnelService : BackgroundService owns a single SshClient and a dictionary of active ForwardedPortLocal / ForwardedPortRemote instances.
• Its main loop idles on a CancellationTokenSource that is fired whenever the UI calls ReconnectAsync().
• AddLiveForwardAsync / RemoveLiveForwardAsync mutate the live client without reconnecting, so you can add or remove ports on the fly.
• TunnelConfigStore reads/writes the JSON config on disk and holds the in-memory state shared with the UI.

Requirements

• .NET 10 SDK
• An SSH server reachable from the machine running ZTunnel, with AllowTcpForwarding yes (see /setup inside the app).