User Guide > Concepts > Tunneling

Tunneling

Tunneling provides a means of persistent connection between Zend Studio and a remote server situated behind a Firewall or NAT. After creating a Tunnel, all communication between Zend Studio and the server can go through that tunnel, instead of assigning more communication ports for the Debug/Profile Sessions made on the remote server.

Note:

A communication tunnel cannot currently be created to a Windows server.

This persistent connection operates even when separated by a firewall. The advantage of this method is that it is possible to use the Zend Studio Integration on several nodes at once. For example, debugging an entire cluster of machines behind a load-balancer over a single debugger connection to Zend Server's Studio Server component.
The technology is based on two functional elements:

The Zend Studio that includes an internal Web server that listens on the local host on a specific Auto Detection port.
Zend Server automatically evaluates Zend Studio’s Auto Detection port, by evaluating Zend Studio’s settings. These are the Tunnel Settings that are defined in Zend Server.

The tunnel communication port should be used in the following circumstances:

When debugging or profiling files on a remote server which is behind a firewall or other security device.

Note:

Your server must be running the Zend Debugger or XDebug in order for remote debugging and profiling capabilities to function.
The Zend Debugger comes bundled with Zend Server, but can also be downloaded as a separate component from http://www.zend.com/en/products/studio/downloads. For instructions on manually installing the Zend Debugger, see Installing the Zend Debugger.

Establishing communication between Zend Studio and Zend Server when Zend Server is running on a remote server which is behind a firewall or other security device. The communication between Zend Studio and Zend Server facilitates the integration that combines Zend Server's event reporting capabilities with Zend Studio’s editing, debugging and profiling features. This enables the viewing and debugging/profiling of Zend Server events in Zend Studio .
See Zend Server Integrationfor more information.

Note:

To find out whether your server is situated behind a firewall, contact your System Administrator.

To set up a tunneling connection, several configuration settings need to be defined both in Zend Studio and on your server's debugger (this can be done through Zend Server or your php.ini file). See Setting Up Tunnelingfor more information.