Update: For the most part, I want to tunnel from the server to the local machine. This only works with the localhostname set to localhost, for example to tunnel a mysql server to the current machine port 10101: ssh -L 10101:localhost:3306 user@remoteserver.com -N The localhost is important, and in this case the mysql client (on the local machine) has to have the hostname set to 127.0.0.1 (for some reason localhost doesnt work).