High Performance SSH

[mute]

Stumbled upon this on HN today, thought it might be of interest: http://www.psc.edu/index.php/hpn-ssh

The gist of it is that out of the box, ssh/scp even with a "weak cipher" is limited by the size of internal flow control buffers. The HPN-SSH project is a patch that alleviates a lot of the artificially imposed bottlenecks on scp and has some pretty impressive results.

I know there has been work done in the latest versions of FreeNAS with regards to ssh (namely giving you the ability to specify no cipher at all), but this might be worth considering for inclusion into the project if it's feasible.

It might not be production ready just yet, as there seems to be a bug related to disconnects they are trying to track down but it seemed pretty cool.

@jkh, I'm looking at you! :)

 

[dlavigne]

Just a note that this has been the default in FreeBSD (and thus FreeNAS) since 9.0: View: http://www.slideshare.net/dlavigne/lavigne-bsdmagjan2012
.

 

[dlavigne]

Hmm, not sure why it says it doesn't find the link as it works...

 

[mute]

Oh, well I'll be. I didn't realize that, but I suppose I would have figured that out had I searched for "FreeBSD and HPN-SSH".

 

[anodos]

It might not be production ready just yet, as there seems to be a bug related to disconnects they are trying to track down but it seemed pretty cool.

Although this is already default for FreeBSD, your statement gives a good indication why these patches are not universally applied. It's one thing if smbd, ftpd, nginx, etc crashes or is buggy. It's quite different if you make sshd flakey. I don't want a bug to make me have to get out of my chair (unless I need more coffee - yes, I consider a coffee cup that runs out of coffee to be a bug).

 

[cyberjock]

...(unless I need more coffee - yes, I consider a coffee cup that runs out of coffee to be a bug).

That's not a bug. That's a feature! It makes you get off your butt. :P