autossh is a program to start a copy of ssh and monitor it, restarting it as necessary should it die or stop passing traffic. The original idea and the mechanism were from rstunnel (Reliable SSH Tunnel). With this version the method changes: autossh uses ssh to construct a loop of ssh forwardings (one from local to remote, one from remote to local), and then sends test data that it expects to get back. (The idea is thanks to Terrence Martin.)