This article describes the causes of slow SSH access to Apstra-managed switches and the steps required to resolve the issue.

The customer reported slow SSH access to switches managed by Apstra. Upon reviewing the configuration, we observed that the maximum number of concurrent SSH connections is limited to 10, which may contribute to the reported delays when the connection limit is reached.

        ssh {

          root-login allow;

          protocol-version v2;

          connection-limit 10;

Logs:

<timestamp, hostname> inetd[13139]: %DAEMON-4: Number of ssh connections at max limit (10)

Per this documentation: Required Communication Ports | Apstra 5.0 | Juniper Networks "Apstra requires a minimum of eight (8) SSH connections, two (2) SSH max-sessions-per-connection, and twenty (20) SSH rate-limit (maximum number of connection attempts per minute)."

The issue was resolved after increasing the SSH connection limit to 20.