Back in University (2010-2013), I lived in a dorm on campus that had internet through the university’s network.

It was extremely cheap and fast (100/100 at equivalent to 3 USD per month), but Internet access was metered with a max of 50 GB / month.

However, access to University resources was not metered, and every student had ssh access to the datacenter.

That -D was a godsend.

Fantastic way to get around firewalls. One of my previous jobs firewalled every server which made developing our network services hell. But they installed an SSH server on pretty much every machine in on the LAN. We got really really good at learning how to set up local port tunnels (even multi-hop ones) to get our work done.

I didn’t see it mentioned on the page. but two super helpful things (in different situations).

Master-mode/multiplexing: https://oooops.dev/2021/01/31/ssh-multiplexing-and-master-mode/

Mosh for ssh over UDP for lossy/up-down connections: https://mosh.org/

Mosh is a lifesaver for laptops and keeping shells alive.

i just use sshuttle for most of his szenarios