How can I give meaningful names to arbitrary ip + port pairs in Windows 7?

Question

I am using a tunnel through putty to access my work computers through remote desktop.

Since I'm accessing multiple computers, I have multiple local IPs to access them, in the form of localhost:port.

I keep forgetting which port maps to which computer, so I need a way to set a meaningful name to each port, such as "lab", "server", etc.

Is it possible in Windows 7? Perhaps using the hosts file?

Answer 1

Can't you save the sessions in PuTTy with the ports allocated to each saved?

Another step would be to setup your firewall to route all traffic to the specific IP's through a specific port, That way you wouldn't need to remember them.

The majority of port configuration is assigned by NAT rather than software.

Answer 2

If PuTTY supports standard "services" name resolution, you might try adding these port numbers to your services file:

Edit C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc (the etc directory is usually hidden, replace C:\ with whatever your system drive is). It is a plain text file, format is self-evident and documented in the top of the file.

Standard service name resolution uses this file to resolve say "smtp" to port 25, so adding your ports there might do the trick.