TIL that the scp command does not, by default, compress files it transfers, and that you need to add the -C flag to make it do that, and by doing that I have sped up my transfer speed about 40x, and without this knowledge I have probably wasted literally days of my life waiting for things in the past.
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@jimbob it's not default because it uses more CPU and doesn't always make an improvement in performance. If you are already copying a compressed file, adding -C simply uses more CPU for no actual performance gain. If you have plenty of CPU at each end, and you're moving compressible data, using "tar -jcf - | ssh <host stuff> 'tar -xjf -' " will get better raw performance.
