Port forwarding creates a bridge between the Formant web application and your robot, where a port you specify is bridged across the two devices.

Prerequisites

Install the Formant agent to your device

Follow the steps in Install the Formant agent to install the agent to your device.

Install `fctl`

Follow the steps in fctl overview and installation to install the fctl command-line tool.

Step 1: Set up port forwarding for your device

To set up port forwarding between your computer and your robot, use the ssh command with the following syntax:

ssh -NT -L <device-port>:localhost:<robot-port> <user>@<formant-device-name>.formant

...where the parameters are used as follows:

Parameter	Usage
`<device-port>`	The port on your computer which should receive bridged data from your robot. This port will receive data seen on `<robot-port>`.
`localhost`	This specifies that the receiving port is on the local host.
`<robot-port>`	The port on your robot whose data should be forwarded to your computer. This port will forward all data to the port specified in `<device-port>`.
`<user>`	The name of the user of this device. Must match an existing username on this device.
`<formant-device-name>`	The name of your device. Must match an existing device in your Formant organization.

Example

Suppose you have a user ubuntu on a device delivery-tractor-1. You want to forward all data seen on delivery-tractor-1's port 8000 to your computer's port 8080. You would run the following command:

ssh -NT -L 8080:localhost:8000 ubuntu@delivery-tractor-1.formant

After running this command, port 8080 on your computer will receive the same data as port 8000 on delivery-tractor-1.