Still having connection problems

[Ryan S. <st...@ag...>]

Folks,

I've set up an SSH tunnel to my server for use with TightVNC:

 ssh -v -L 5901:localhost:5901 my.servers.external.ip

Then, in the TightVNC viewer:

localhost::5901

This gets me "Failed to connect to server".

So, I tried bypassing the local loopback interface altogether, wondering 
if that was the problem:

my.servers.external.ip::5901

Same result; "Failed to connect to server".

Any suggestions, hints?  Am I missing something completely obvious?  
Thanks in advance!

Ryan