# SOCKS 5 proxy tunnel
Open a terminal program on your computer. On Mac OS X, this is Terminal in `Applications > Utilities`.
Set up the tunnel with this command:
```bash
ssh -D 8123 -f -C -q -N ubuntu@example.com
```
Explanation of arguments
```
-D: Tells SSH that we want a SOCKS tunnel on the specified port number (you can choose a number between 1025-65536)
-f: Forks the process to the background
-C: Compresses the data before sending it
-q: Uses quiet mode
-N: Tells SSH that no command will be sent once the tunnel is up
```
Be sure to replace ubuntu@example.com with your own sudo user and server IP address or domain name.
Once you enter the command, you'll immediately be brought to the command prompt again with no sign of success or failure; that's normal.
Verify that the tunnel is up and running with this command:
```bash
ps aux | grep ssh
```
You should see a line in the output like:
Output
```bash
ubuntu 14345 0.0 0.0 2462228 452 ?? Ss 6:43AM 0:00.00 ssh -D 8123 -f -C -q -N ubuntu@example.com
```
You can quit your terminal application and the tunnel will stay up. That is because we used the `-f` argument which put the SSH session into the background.
> Note: If you want to terminate the tunnel you'll have to grab the PID via ps and use the kill command, which we'll show you how to do later.
> source: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-route-web-traffic-securely-without-a-vpn-using-a-socks-tunnel