Tip: Faster remote shells with multiplexed SSH

Edit ~/.ssh/config (or /etc/ssh/ssh_config for sitewide configuration) and add the following snippet:

Host *
   ControlMaster auto
   ControlPersist 120
   ControlPath ~/.ssh/socket-%r@%h:%p

This will create a socket for each set (user, machine, port) when the first SSH session is opened. Further sessions will see the socket and use it instead of opening a new connection, multiplexing all concurrent connections via the same connection. The same goes for scp and sftp.

Nice side-effects of this:

• No functionality is lost at all.
• SSH sessions will open faster, as there is no need to establish a connection.
• You will not need to enter you password everytime (but note that maybe you should be using public-key authentication).
• You can open several sessions to servers which put a limit on the number of simultaneous connections.
• If you are a sysadmin, you can limit the number of SSH connections to exactly one per user :-)