I'm not sure if it'll work. Not being able to use port 443 is part of the reason for my interest in this in the first place. But if you're inclined to try, please post your results. TX

OMG I got it working

so I was putting the ProxyCommand in the wrong file. I was supposed to put it into /etc/ssh/ssh_config

but instead, I put it into /home/user/.ssh/config

now to figure out port relay/tunneling...

OK partial success

I installed squid on my ubuntu machine, which is also my ssh server.

I set SSH to 443 and Squid to 8888 on the server.

on my N900

I use in the terminal:
ssh -N -p 443 -L 8888:localhost:8888 username@myserver -vvv

you can omit the -vvv, but it helped with debugging.

I then went into n900 settings > internet connections > selected the WAP connection > advanced > proxy information

I put 127.0.0.1 and port 8888 for each entry

After I did all this, I managed to get onto the internet, however, it is a lot slower. I am also able to connect to MSN (pecan), but it's a bit buggy... usable though. My first 1 or 2 messages sent won't go through, but after that, they do.

I say it's a partial success because I had to change Pecan to HTTP mode in order for it to connect. My skype and gtalk accounts did not connect, but I'm hoping it's just a setting in squid....

Hey mtran66, any further updates? And qole, you haven't anything to add? Do you think mtran66 is on the right track? Is there any reason we shouldn't be able to ssh to a server listening on port 80 without any fancy bells-n-whistles? TX

I think you can ssh into port 80. My problem was that I was putting in the configuration in the wrong file.

I haven't looked into this further yet, been busy.

grog, mtran66: I'm not really interested in trying this out, since I don't have those limitations so I would be doing it purely as a technical exercise, but the whole corkscrew and squid proxy thing to me seems way overkill.

You should just have to:

1. Set up ssh on your host to listen on port 80.
2. Install tsocks on the N900 and edit the config file /etc/tsocks.conf to look like this:
3. Then, on the N900:

That should get you logged in to your host.

4. Now open a new terminal, and run:

Thanks for the responses. I haven't had any luck at all. As I had posted before, even a simple:

While working fine using wifi just times out over gprs. Really strange, 'cause it's port 80, I would've thought that any data sent over the port would get through?

Or is it maybe just the response isn't allowed back? I don't know enough to hazard a guess but I then realized that I hadn't yet transferred the N900's public key to my server, therefore it was expecting a response. So I gen'd & copied my key over, confirmed that it worked without a password prompt over wifi, but it still failed over gprs. I even tried the IP of the box instead of the hostname, thinking that it may be a DNS issue. It wasn't. I then tried adding the -n & -N switches along with -D to ssh, thinking that perhaps they were required. They don't seem to be, still failed with a time out.

So it looks like I may have to live without email away from wifi . It seems that Maps works, although maybe this is more a reflection of it's offline capability, I don't know. Still strange to me how ssh, or rather non-HTTP protocols, are blocked even over port 80. Maybe someone can venture a guess on that.

Thanks guys

Nice. I noticed that they're currently waiving the $35 setup. Is that a month-to-month or a contract? Seems the former, not sure. TX

The plan is month-to-month with no extra fees (no supposed "911 fee" etc), only taxes (PST/GST). Honestly, Fido is the cheapest plan with real data (you can even make poor-quality Skype calls over it) in Canada right now.

Is there any data plan that allows good quality VOIP calls ?

Thanks