SSH (Secure Shell) is a program used to log into another computer over a network, to execute commands in a remote machine, to move files from one machine to another and quite often, used to check e-mail. It provides strong authentication and secure communications over insecure channels. It is intended as a replacement for rlogin, rsh, rcp and Telnet.
We recommend using a SSH client opposed to Telnet to connect to engineering servers to protect you and your account. When using Telnet, everything you do is unencrypted--including when you send your password to log in. This means other people on the network can see what you are doing and read your password. If you use SSH, your password and all activity will be encrypted so others cannot read your password or your data. Preventing people from seeing your passwords will help prevent other people from gaining access to your account.
In the DECS public labs we use PuTTY as our SSH client and we recommend this client to all our users. It's free to download and easy to use.
Below is the link where you can download PuTTY. If you are running any version of Windows you will want to click on the putty.exe link that will begin your download. Follow the instructions below to set up PuTTY. The download site also provides documentation on the latest releases and other usefull information on PuTTY and SSH.
If you would like additional information on SSH, we recommend this site: