Install two pieces of software on your Windows machine. The first is an SSH client, I would recommend the one from ssh.com, other ssh clients will work. Download and install: http://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/ssh/SSHSecureShellClient-3.2.9.exe Next a VNC client (download and install the free VNC Viewer for Windows): http://www.realvnc.com/ Once these two are installed, start the "SSH Secure Shell Client" program. Go to "Edit Profiles", select the default profile and enter the host to go to such as "sunbelt.math.utah.edu" (there are seven other hosts you could choose from). Choosing a specific host, makes using VNC a little simpler. Also, enter your username. Next, go to the tunneling tab, select "Add...", then enter the following: Display Name: VNC Type: TCP Listen Port: 5901 Check: Allow Local Connections Only Destination Host: localhost Destination Port: 5901 Then click "OK" in the "Add New Outgoing Tunnel" and "OK" on the "Profiles" dialog box. Sometimes the tunnel isn't added correctly, so you might want to go back to "Edit Profiles" and make sure the information you added is still there. The equivalent command-line options for an OpenSSH client would be: ssh -L 5901:localhost:5901 ... Then open a connection using the default profile, logging in with your username and password. When you are logged in, you'll only need to execute the following commands one time: mkdir ~/.vnc touch ~/.vnc/xstartup Then give the command (the first time this command is run, you will be prompted to create a new password for VNC): vncserver -localhost -geometry 1152x900 -query localhost -once Once the vncserver is running on one of the Math systems, it will remain running until either you kill it (with something like "vncserver -kill :1") or the system is restarted. Next start the VNCViewer program on your PC and enter "localhost:1" for the "Server". You should get a new window with a login screen for the Sun system here in Math (this might take a minute or two to show up). Login on that screen with your Math username and password. You should now be set to run Maple and other software here. When you are finished you can just close the VNCViewer and give the command "logout" in the SSH window. The next time you are ready to work on your Math homework, you can just connect with SSH and the VNCViewer, without having to start the vncserver and login. The way all this works is: VNCViewer(localhost:5901) <-> (localhost:5901)SSH(sunbelt:ssh) <-> (sunbelt:ssh)SSH(localhost:5901) <-> vncserver(localhost:5901) The vncviewer on your PC talks to the SSH client on your PC over port 5901. The SSH client talks to the SSH server using the SSH protocol. The SSH server on sunbelt talks to the vncserver on sunbelt over port 5901. When you start the vncserver it prints out a line like: sunbelt.math.utah.edu:8 The number at the end of that is the "VNC display number", which maps to the port number by adding 5900 (eg. display 8 would be port 5908). The changes to the SSH tunnel to accomodate using display 8 would be, to change the destination port in the tunnel to 5908.