[paulfharrison]

For web-servers on remote machines, I have found this useful:

  socat TCP4-LISTEN:1234,fork,bind=127.0.0.1 EXEC:'ssh my.remote.server nc 127.0.0.1 1234'

1234 = local/remote port. Can be adapted to use unix sockets at the remote end. my.remote.server = your remote server address.

This will set up a tunnel only when needed, and seems to play nicely with my browser.