Speeding up SSH SCP connections

Speeding up SCP copy operations

So you're quickly copying a ~12GB MKV file from your download server to your archive server and are only getting a paltry 25MB/s.... obviously it isn't the network or disk as you've tested the dual gig connection at around 80-90MB/s via samba. You can't be arsed using rsync so you use scp to copy it but it's pretty damn slow.

file.mkv  12% 1893MB  22.0MB/s   10:23 ETA

Sound familiar? Well, you'll need to change the encryption options and turn off compression.

You can either do this on the command line (scp -c arcfour). Arcfour is plain RC4 with a 128-bit key (RFC4253).

or your could change to ~./ssh/config file to something line this:

Host hal
        Compression no
        Ciphers arcfour

After these changes you should be getting around double to triple the SCP copy speed

      100%   15GB  50.3MB/s   05:10

Please note this is for internal connections only. I wouldn't recommend this for external connections.