In 1960, J.C.R. Licklider described a future where humans and computers think together as partners. Sixty-six years later, AI coding assistants and LLMs are fulfilling that vision, but not in the way most people assume.

A decision framework for choosing SSH direct, an edge proxy, or native HTTPS for network automation. Plus what the industry needs to build next.

Most network devices don’t speak HTTPS natively. The practical solution: move SSH to the edge and talk HTTPS (or QUIC) over the WAN. Here’s the proxy, the tunnel, and the measured proof.

I built clibench, a dual-protocol device emulator in Go, to measure SSH vs HTTPS CLI performance at realistic latencies. Here’s the architecture, the code, and the numbers.

SSH-based network automation is slow at scale. Not because of the devices, but because of the protocol. Here’s what the SSH handshake actually costs and why HTTPS is a faster transport for CLI commands.

You type ssh router1 and a prompt appears. Between those two events, dozens of packets cross the wire across three protocol layers. Here’s what’s actually happening, and why it matters for automation.

CiSSHGo is a Go-based SSH server that emulates network equipment by playing back command transcripts. Here’s what it can do and where it fits in your testing workflow.