Reusing SSH Connection

SOURCE : http://sshmenu.sourceforge.net/articles/transparent-mulithop.html

"The transparent multi-hop connections can be very useful but you may find that it takes a second or two to establish each connection. This delay can become annoying if it happens a lot (e.g.: every time you save a file from the text editor).
The good news is that if you can configure SSH to reuse an existing connection. This means that for example if you have an SSH shell session running then a new connection for SCP can skip the connection setup phase. Two steps are required:
First, you must create a directory (or 'folder') which SSH will use to keep track of established connections:

mkdir ~/.ssh/tmp

Next, add these two lines at the start of your ~/.ssh/config (make sure to use your username in place of 'YOUR-NAME'):

ControlMaster auto
ControlPath   /home/YOUR-NAME/.ssh/tmp/%h_%p_%r

As you can see, a small investment in time setting up your SSH configuration can pay back dividends in convenience."