Git Clone speed: ssh vs http

[Noam Tamim]

My stash admins have installed a version of stash that supports ssh, so I consider using ssh for clone/push/pull/... instead of http -- for development, not just CI.

Using SourceTree (v1.8.1, if it matters) on OSX Mavericks, which protocol should be faster -- http or ssh? Initial clone is relatively rare, so the main factor is the speed of pull/fetch/checkout and push.

[Michael Heemskerk · Accepted solution]

Hi Noam,

It's unlikely that there is a significant speed difference between SSH and HTTPS. Both transports send the same data over the wire and perform SSL encryption. Depending on how Stash has been set up, the SSL encryption for HTTPS could be performed by a reverse proxy (Apache/Nginx) which would reduce the load on the Stash server and could translate is slightly better performance over HTTPS than you'd get over SSH, but it's hard to say.

If you're feeling like experimenting, you can set up two remotes for your repository and see which one works best for you.

Hope that helps,

Michael

[Noam Tamim]

Actually, since this in inside the intranet, they use plain http. I suppose it means that in this setup http is likely to be faster.

[Robert_Booke]

We are seeing an extremely significant different with ssh vs https.

Today we are getting about 15 MiB/s over https and only 1 MiB/s over ssh from the same machine , same repository.

Our https/ SSL is configured in a reverse proxy , we are using an f5 appliance.

We would like to speed up our ssh performance.

[Vishnu NUK]

SSL Overhead is negligible now a days with added security and privacy concerns going other way around is not a good option anyway!  

If you are getting very low speed on SSL make sure receiving PC/Device is capable of handling those speeds. Run a speed test via HTTP  & HTTPS and compare yourself.