Compression is off by default in OpenSSH, at least `man 5 ssh_config` says:
reply> Specifies whether to use compression. The argument must be yes or no (the default).
So I'm surprised you see speedups with your invocation.
Good point. Seems like I enabled it in ~/.ssh/config ages ago and did forget about it. Nonetheless, it's good to check whether it's enabled when using rsync to transfer large, already well compressed files.
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