hi there, poking around in the HP ssh docs, one can see the following in the FAQ:
Q: How is the performance of HP-UX Secure Shell? A: Compared with conventional file transfer methods, the scp command is 2 - 3 times slower than rcp, and sftp is 2 to 3 times slower than ftp. This is because HP-UX Secure Shell authenticates both the server and users, and encrypts both the data and the password. In addition, HP recommends you use the /dev/random device on your system to significantly speed up program initialization. i find it interesting that most of the user community perceives scp/sftp multiple times slower then their not encrypted counterparts. now, not taking into consideration the HP-UX itself is a bottleneck on its own (not mentioning their RNG interface) i think some of us agrees that scp/sftp is "kind of slower" when it comes to bulk data transfer. nobody expects scp to be as fast as samba or ftp of course, the encryption has a great overhead, especially for older machines (which my local network router is) but a couple of months ago a link appeared here describing a HPN (as in hihg performance enabled) ssh patch. i kept that mail for a very long time because i was very much interested in the answers of the ssh developers, but there was none. and so i assumed it must be rubish or something. so before anyone tags this mail as a trolling flamebait (which it is not), i just would like to ask -have others tried HPN-SSH? -have ssh developers tried it? -or simply, has ssh hit its performance limit and can't get any better? i think it would be very nice to have a performance page on the openssh site describing what should be expected, what is "normal" and the intended performance of ssh to clear up possible misunderstandings. (like mine here) -f -- i'm so broke i can't even pay attention.
